


the problem with going off the beaten track

by suitablyskippy



Category: Gintama
Genre: Extremely Reliable Narrator, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Lovers to Co-Conspirators, Other, Reverse Mystery, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-20 06:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8238838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: “Hold tight,” Tae instructs. “Tighter than that – Kyuu-chan, come on.” She lets go of the handlebars to wrap Kyuubei’s arms more securely around her middle. The end of Jugem Jugem’s tail whips against her neck as he burrows down inside his master’s collar. “Remember,” says Tae, revving the engine, “if anyone asks, Kyuu-chan – we’ve never heard of Gintama.”“Never even once,” agrees Kyuubei, muffled by the helmet’s visor.(Tae and Kyuubei take a nice, relaxing, non-suspicious holiday; and in the meantime, for almost certainly unrelated reasons, Shinpachi's life goes to hell.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I definitely couldn't have written this without Incandenza, who a) kicked off the whole bizarre conversation that spawned this fic in the first place, and b) totally ignored me every time I told her there was definitely no way I was ever actually seriously going to write this, and relentlessly enabled me instead. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF THAT!!! (And I've also really got to thank [name redacted], but I'm saving that one for the endnotes.)

 

Dawn is only a pale pink possibility along the very lowest ridges of the mountains when Tae reaches the Yagyuu gates. Two men are standing guard, armed and yawning; neither one notices her, and she slips back into the deep shadow of the forest and hurries on her way, through spindly branches and drifts of mouldering pine needles, skirting around the high walls until she reaches the east gate: small, unpainted, unguarded. 

Tae lets herself in. The estate is ghostly at this hour of the morning. She hurries down shadowy paths between shadowy buildings, past shadowy ponds and a shadowy bridge with a shadowy bamboo thicket beyond; she startles a peacock stalking in the shadows behind the dojo and hurries on, into the broad and shadowy courtyard at the rear of the main house. 

Quiet as she can, she hurries across the gravel; quiet as she can, she steps up onto the veranda. 

“Kyuu-chan?” she whispers. No answer. Quiet as she can, she slides the door back and slips inside. “Kyuu-chan, it’s only me. Are you awake?”

It doesn’t seem like it. In the gloom within there’s no answer, no movement. She kneels down beside the futon and touches Kyuubei’s shoulder, and whispers again – and again, and again, with increasing urgency: “Kyuu-chan. Kyuu-chan. _Kyuu-chan_ —”

An inordinate amount of time later, Kyuubei stirs, blearily. “...Tae-chan?” 

Tae makes a shushing sound at once, finger to her lips. “It’s the middle of the night, we mustn’t wake anyone up... You don’t usually sleep so soundly, do you?”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Kyuubei whispers back. “But I thought I was. I heard your voice and assumed I was dreaming, so I didn’t answer. Because I was enjoying the dream.” In the room’s other futon, the extremely small futon, Jugem Jugem has woken up as well. Kyuubei offers him a finger and he clambers sleepily up to sit on his master’s shoulder, beneath a curtain of his master’s unbrushed hair. “Is something wrong, Tae-chan?”

“No – no, nothing at all,” says Tae, “the opposite, in fact – but Kyuu-chan, listen, this is very important. What do you think about going on a holiday?”

Kyuubei nods, and yawns. “A wonderful idea, Tae-chan. What sort of holiday?”

“A holiday starting very soon,” says Tae. “A holiday starting now.”

It’s clear that Kyuubei wants to accept this as unquestioningly as usual; but it’s also clear, from the look of deeply conflicted hesitation, that doing so is proving rather more difficult than usual. 

“I’ve brought all my things with me,” Tae whispers excitedly, “so we can leave as soon as you’re ready, if you want to; and I’ve got transport all sorted out, so that’s nothing to worry about, either. And I know you’re supposed to be leading training in the morning, but if you’re not there then Tojo-san will do it, won’t he? And it would be nice for him to have something to do with his time except cutting up your family photo albums to make dress-up dolls. So what do you think?” 

It’s all she can do to keep to a reasonable whisper, and her excitement must be catching: Kyuubei’s sitting straighter, already more alert, rubbing away the last of any remaining sleep. “Where would we go?”

“I haven’t decided that part yet,” says Tae. 

“How long would we stay?”

“I haven’t decided that part yet, either,” says Tae – and quickly she adds, “The only thing I really _have_ decided is that we need to go as soon as possible, if we’re going to go, because it’ll be daylight soon; and the most important thing of all is that we put as much distance between us and Edo today as we possibly can.”

After a moment of silent deliberation, Kyuubei asks, “Could Jugem Jugem come?” 

“Of course he could,” says Tae. 

“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” says Kyuubei, and kicks back the sheets. 

It’s a swift, silent operation. Tae rolls up Jugem Jugem’s futon for him, and he tucks it efficiently into a storage device that looks like it might once have been a napkin ring; Kyuubei dresses quickly and starts to pack; and as hard as Tae’s listening, the halls of the house stay soundless, deserted. 

“Ready,” Kyuubei announces in a whisper, and straightens up with a bag on one shoulder and a monkey on the other. Jugem Jugem tugs on his master’s ponytail, and his master translates: “Jugem Jugem’s ready too.”

Tae slides open the door. The light of dawn is turning the gravel paths between the ponds a slightly paler shade of grey. Then a thought strikes, and quickly she turns back. “Could you – if you wouldn’t mind, Kyuu-chan, do you think you could wear a different coat? Something a little less... recognisable?”

“Of course,” says Kyuubei, and promptly sets back down both bag and monkey. 

“I wouldn’t usually ask,” begins Tae apologetically – and then a glimpse of movement at the edge of her vision stops her dead, frozen in place – movement somewhere outside, in the narrow slice of shadowy courtyard beyond the open door—

“You don’t need to explain, Tae-chan. I know how it is.” Kyuubei’s whisper is muffled by the wardrobe; whatever moved isn’t moving now, if it ever moved at all... And then from the corner of her eye Tae sees it again: a peacock, its tail flaring, strutting out across the gravel paths; and relief floods through her, warm as wine. “The coat is a key aspect of my character design. And taking a holiday is about getting away from things, including key aspects of character design.” 

“It is,” says Tae, still relieved. “We have so many responsibilities, don’t we? And it’s nice to escape them, sometimes. It’s nice to forget all about them for a little while. And personally, I find that going incognito is the best way to escape almost anything at all.”

The replacement coat is rather less dramatic than the usual one: hardly worn, plain dark blue, its tails not quite as sweeping. By irrepressible habit, Kyuubei flips up the collar – and hesitates a moment, sword in hand, looking Tae up and down. “I had noticed the... change. In your personal style. But I didn’t want to comment until I was sure of how I felt about it.”

Tae looks where Kyuubei’s looking, which is down at the rest of herself – in the single pair of jeans she owns, and a black bomber jacket with a lopsided golden skull screaming flame embroidered on its back. The jacket is Gintoki’s, technically, or had been once; Kagura liberated it for her own purposes, found to her dismay that it was too big for her even with the cuffs rolled back, and passed it generously into Tae’s custody until such time as Kagura decides it’s time for her to re-inherit. 

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to ride a motorbike in full kimono,” says Tae, by way of rueful explanation, and slides the veranda door back wider. 

Dawn still hasn’t risen in the grounds of the estate. Still swift, still silent, Tae hurries down the gravel paths with Kyuubei close behind. Away from the main house, past a fountain or three, across several broad courtyards of ever decreasing impressiveness, past the smaller second dojo and the training grounds beyond it... “I remember the east gate was always the best place to sneak in when we were little,” Tae whispers, as she leads the way – quickly, quietly – towards it. “Your father never did work out how you kept smuggling me in, did he?” 

“He suspected the sewage system was involved,” says Kyuubei, in a tone of some nostalgia. “He would order periodic searches of the septic tank. But you were never there.” 

The forest crowds up against the high walls outside the gate, tall and dark and eerily silent. The ground falls away in an almost vertical slope, but even in the darkness both of them are surefooted with experience, hurrying down and down to the narrow forest road that lies deserted far below. 

Parked where she skidded it to a halt and leapt off at high speed, Tae’s hired motorbike is cherry red, but in the gloom it’s an unattractive shade of dark grey; the helmets she’s stowed inside it are white, or at least were white once upon a time, and both are scraped and dented enough to give the impression of having survived a considerable amount of high-speed trauma. 

She runs the engine, and Kyuubei’s weight settles into place behind her. The road is still deserted, but the light is starting to rise now; it won’t be long before the first of the early morning traffic starts winding through the mountains, and they need to be gone well before that happens. “Hold tight,” Tae instructs. “Tighter than _that_ – Kyuu-chan, come on.” She lets go of the handlebars to wrap Kyuubei’s arms more securely around her middle. The end of Jugem Jugem’s tail whips against her neck as he burrows down inside his master’s collar. “Remember,” says Tae, revving the engine, “if anyone asks, Kyuu-chan – we’ve never heard of Gintama.”

“Never even once,” agrees Kyuubei, muffled by the helmet’s visor. 

By the time dawn’s fully risen, Edo’s city limits are only a memory. 

 

+++ 

 

The sun is scorching by mid-morning, but the narrow twisting roads of the mountain foothills have such low speed limits that it would be unreasonable for anyone to expect Tae to follow them; so she twists the throttle hard and the wind roars as loud as the engine, whipping her repossessed bomber jacket open behind her, holding the heat at bay. Her heart feels as though it’s been set alight by adrenalin, and sometime before midday a heavy van comes grumbling up the road towards them at a speed so reckless it seems rather like the driver is expecting Tae to pull over and let it pass – which she has no intention of doing and which the driver realises, suddenly, with a squeal of brakes and a last-minute swerve that barely keeps his van from overturning in the roadside ditch – and the motorbike roars on, and the adrenalin kindling in her heart burns brighter, and what little other traffic dares to challenge them on these narrow winding roads is swiftly shown the error of its ways. 

In a perfect world, there’d be a nice, easy way to make sure that urgent long-distance travel could continue with no need for breaks at all – food and drink taken through a tube, perhaps; toilet breaks taken through a different tube, perhaps – but this isn’t quite a perfect world. 

“I thought it’d be best if we went off the beaten track, to start with,” Tae explains, as she unpacks her selection of neatly-boxed picnic materials. “If we really left the city behind us... But I suppose the problem with going off the beaten track is that unbeaten tracks are so much more uneven than the other kind, aren’t they?” 

Kyuubei takes a deep breath, and manages to nod. “Carelessly... carelessly maintained, Tae-chan. The roads. That’s why I’m unwell.”

“And I don’t think that motorcycle has very good suspension, either,” says Tae, and gives Kyuubei’s knee a sympathetic pat. The forests are thinning out here, the foothills flattening into plains; the landscape is getting ready to give way to fields. In a sunny clearing amidst the trees, Kyuubei is sitting very still on a picnic blanket and – eye closed, only slightly grey-faced – taking deep, calming breaths. “It’s hardly a surprise you’re feeling travelsick, really... But I’m sure you’ll feel much better if you eat something, Kyuu-chan.”

It’s only a light lunch, summery and refreshing and charred to a nicely powdery consistency, but Tae’s masterful home cooking works its usual magic: Kyuubei’s colour returns after only a few bites, and is swiftly followed by Kyuubei’s appetite, voice, and ability to sit upright without doubling over to retch from travel sickness. 

The sun dazzles far above them in a cloudless sky, and Tae shrugs off her motorcycle jacket to let it warm her. Jugem Jugem is spitting out every mouthful his master feeds him, but that can hardly be helped; he’s only a monkey, after all, and can’t be expected to have the sophisticated palate of a human. 

They’re back on the road within the hour. The forests give way to fields, and then swiftly to the highway, and all at once they’re not the only ones on the road: on either side traffic roars by, cars and trucks and peculiar Amanto-made vehicles powered by hoverjets or caterpillar tracks or occasional bursts of flame propelling from the back end. But Tae’s bike is smaller and lighter than all of them, and its driver more fearless than any of them, and she twists the throttle harder still and sets to work swerving through it. Kyuubei’s grip around her waist tightens in alarm; she takes her hand from the handlebars to offer a reassuring pat, and veers so sharply around the nose of a lumbering haulage lorry that her back wheel skids with a shriek of rubber, and Kyuubei clutches tighter still. 

“It’s perfectly safe!” Tae yells into the wind, and yanks the steering hard, and swerves across three lanes of traffic in one go. 

 

+++

 

That first evening, they stop in a small bland town that has very little going for it beside the fact it isn’t Edo, and take one room in a small bland hotel that has very little going for it beside the fact it isn’t Snack Smile. As a matter both of style and practicality, Tae slides on a pair of large round sunglasses and keeps them firmly on from streets to shops to hotel restaurant, in indoor light and outdoor gloom, right up until she’s changed for bed and checked and double-checked that the door of their room is locked behind them. 

“We won’t be staying here,” she confides, as she draws the curtains against the golden evening light outside. “We’ll find somewhere much better than this, Kyuu-chan. Somewhere much further away. Somewhere no one will ever think of looking.”

Kyuubei’s watching sleepily as she gets into bed, clinging onto consciousness only by sheer stubborn force of will. “Looking for what, Tae-chan?”

“Oh, you know,” says Tae, comfortingly vague. “For me, for you... You know what Gin-san and the others are like – as soon as the anime gets renewed again, they always start trying to pass their own responsibilities off on everyone else.” She switches out the lamp between their beds. The room still glows golden through the curtains. “But if they need us for any promotional materials, they’ll just have to re-cast our parts. I’m sure Kagura-chan won’t mind taking over from me for a little while, and Gin-san’s resourceful; he can find someone to step in for you, if he really needs to.”

“Katsura would do,” says Kyuubei, sleepily reflective. “Or Tsukuyo-san. It depends whether Gintoki considers the hairstyle or the eye damage more distinctive.”

“And either way, it’s not our problem anymore,” says Tae. The thought of just how many things ceased to be her problem anymore when she left the Kodoukan dojo behind in her motorcycle’s exhaust fumes this morning is enough to turn her hard mattress to feathers and her scratchy sheets to cotton. She rolls over, tired but thoroughly content, and smiles across the gap between their beds. “Sleep well, Kyuu-chan.”

“You too, Tae-chan.”

And Tae does. She really does. 

 

+++

 

Dawn rises as pink and early the next morning as it had the day before, and the day itself unrolls in much the same way as the last one: road dust and car horns and scenery tinted grey by the protective screen of her helmet’s visor, blurring past beneath the pressure of extremely high speeds, incipient road rage, and the giddy, intoxicating thrill of adrenalin. 

Another night passes in another nondescript hotel; another pink dawn rises, fresh and clear; another morning is begun with the rumble of the motorcycle’s exhaust, and they’re off again. 

The next town along emerges from the quiet roadsides just as its shops are beginning to open, and they stop for breakfast at a teashop whose outdoor tables overlook a narrow, rocky stream. The water burbles peacefully along beside them, and the early morning sun sparkles across the water, and Jugem Jugem clambers down the shore to investigate the waterweeds – though the investigation ends as soon as he gets his tail wet, at which point he comes racing back in a state of piteous distress to seek comfort on his master’s shoulder and grapefruit from his master’s plate, both of which Kyuubei sympathetically provides. 

The city is another world away; the problems of the city are another world away; all but two of the inhabitants of the city are another world away. Tae pays the check in full, in cash, in a swift enough manoeuvre that Kyuubei doesn’t have time to realise what she’s doing and prevent it, and quashes all subsequent objections in a mood of undentable happiness. 

“I’ve been saving up,” Tae explains, tucking a very fat wedge of notes back inside her purse. “I’ve been saving up especially for a holiday, in fact. You wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been planning all this, Kyuu-chan.”

“I had no idea,” says Kyuubei, in frank bemusement. 

Tae’s purse itself is almost too fat to fit back inside her pocket; with an effort, she shoves it in. There’s more money in her left shoe, in the hollowed-out sole of her motorcycle boot, and more in a secret pocket she stitched inside the back of her bomber jacket, and one final stash in a hidden compartment deep inside her bike’s storage box; but the contents of her purse will do, for now. “This will probably sound a little odd to you,” she says, as the bell above the teashop’s door tinkles, “but... that makes me very happy, Kyuu-chan. It really does. If even _you_ didn’t know...” 

Kyuubei holds the door for her, bemusement growing. “If – even me, Tae-chan?” 

“I tried to keep it secret,” Tae says happily. She slips her arm through Kyuubei’s and squeezes. “I tried _very_ hard to keep it secret, Kyuu-chan.”

“I see,” says Kyuubei, relieved to understand. “In that case... you succeeded. You certainly succeeded, Tae-chan.”

The street outside is peaceful, a lone shopkeeper sweeping beneath his canopy. In the wide shopfront window at his back, Tae catches a reflection of Kyuubei at the side of a woman she’s never seen before; a disorientating instant later she recognises her near-unrecognisable self, and lifts her hand to adjust her sunglasses. The woman lifts her hand, too. Odd as it is to see her own actions mirrored by a stranger, it’s odder still to see anyone but herself at Kyuubei’s side; it’s as uncanny to see a world where the space at each of their sides doesn’t belong to the other as it is to see a world where Tae herself goes about her everyday business in jeans and a men’s biker gang jacket. 

With a wet _splat_ , the shining shopfront window loses its shine. Kyuubei whirls about in horror and cries, “Apologise at once, Jugem Jugem!” 

The morning is getting hot before Jugem Jugem has dutifully cleaned the window up again to his master’s satisfaction. It’s their first delay, but Tae has Kyuubei’s heartfelt promise that it’s a worthwhile one, and they’re making excellent time regardless; nothing but an unforeseen catastrophe could affect her buoyant mood, and Tae’s planned her holiday far too well for that to even be a risk worth contemplating. 

 

+++

 

Between that town and the next it’s a long journey, along wide roads that wind through fields of some yellowish crop that neither Tae nor Kyuubei – both city born, both city raised – can identify, even when they stop for lunch in the shade of a whole towering field of the stuff. 

The last of the picnic food is still perfectly edible, due to Tae’s own foresight in charring it thoroughly enough to be sure it would keep this long, and though it’s a little less fresh, it’s just as nutritious, and just as much like coal ash. The mystery crops are rustling all around them in the breeze; the slope down to the road is flourishing brightly with equally mystery weeds; at her side, in the shade, Kyuubei has lain down for a post-lunch digestion break, or possibly a nap. In the contented aftermath of a good square meal – and in the heat, in the peace and quiet, in the novelty of it all – the city feels a very long way away. 

The road is empty for as far as she can see it, until it winds away from sight through the fields. There’s no sound of traffic at all – only the whirring of cicadas, and the subsequent crunching of Jugem Jugem eating the cicadas. The best thing to do would be to jump right back on the bike, and accelerate on into the dusty horizon without pausing to look back... but before that, perhaps just a _little_ break...

Tae folds her jacket for a pillow and lies down too. Warm right through with good food, good company, and good weather, not even the pungent stink of Jugem Jugem practising his faecal target practice can sink her mood of mellow thoughtfulness. 

After a little while, she says, “Do you ever feel like people are taking you for granted, Kyuu-chan?”

Kyuubei considers this, then looks to the side and considers her as well. “In what sense, Tae-chan?”

“Oh, in any sense, I suppose,” says Tae, careless as she can. “Not appreciating your work, perhaps. Not appreciating how hard you work. Or how hard you _have_ to work, just to get all the normal everyday things done, even before all the additional duties of an overwhelmingly popular supporting character with strong links to the protagonists are added in as well—” She stops herself short, but Kyuubei’s still watching her, still listening, unspeakably grave and unspeakably understanding. A deep gratitude takes Tae’s heart and grips it tight, and her carelessness slides away. Passion replaces it. “Assuming you’ll work for no reward, because of course there’s no reason you’d require a reward. Assuming your work will always be done, because it always _is_ done. Assuming that just because no one else cares how hard you work, of course _you_ don’t care about it, either... Well,” forcing her voice lighter by several degrees, “just that sort of thing, Kyuu-chan. Just in that general sense.”

“In that case,” says Kyuubei, “in _that_ sense, Tae-chan... I haven’t.”

“But in other senses?” says Tae. 

Kyuubei thinks about it. “Sometimes I read Shounen Jump. Gintoki always assumes he’s not the only one who does, so I have to understand his jokes. But I don’t enjoy it.”

“Because you’re over the age of twelve, Kyuu-chan?”

“Very likely, Tae-chan.”

“Then you know exactly what I mean,” Tae says earnestly, “ _exactly_ the sort of thing I mean, Kyuu-chan.” Dry grass rustles beneath her as she rolls onto her side, to better search Kyuubei’s expression for whatever she might find there. “And when you feel that way, Kyuu-chan, like you’re being taken for granted, do you – would you ever... _do_ anything about it?”

Kyuubei thinks about that, too. “I don’t know. Maybe. I suppose it would depend.” The pause is careful, the question is guarded: “Tae-chan, are you... having problems with somebody?”

“Oh, I’m always having problems with someone or other,” Tae says sunnily, “that’s just a hazard of reaching popularity on a level as astronomical as mine. But,” as the sunniness fades a little, “what if... what if I was? If someone _was_ taking me for granted – then what would you do, Kyuu-chan? If you were me?”

“Show the culprit the error of his ways,” says Kyuubei, with a tone of quiet certainty and not a moment’s hesitation. “And if I were me, which I am, then I’d do the same. Behaviour like that is unacceptable, Tae-chan. People need to understand that. I would teach the culprit a lesson and ensure the lesson was learned.”

There’s no need to ask what sort of lesson: Kyuubei’s hand is resting at the empty belt loop from which a sword usually hangs. The deep gratitude still gripping Tae’s heart grips it tighter. “Thank you,” she says, with an effort. The force of some great surging emotion nearly takes her words from her. “With all my heart, Kyuu-chan. That really means a lot to me.”

“No one who knows you should ever be allowed to forget how lucky they are, Tae-chan.” 

The flood of emotion surging inside Tae overwhelms her, and reveals itself: it’s relief. As light as though a weight’s been lifted from her, as overjoyed as though she’s been voted the club’s most popular girl for the fifth month running. “That’s just what I think, Kyuu-chan! If it’s me, or you, or Kagura-chan – then that’s exactly what I think. People _should_ be grateful for me, shouldn’t they?”

“I can’t tolerate the existence of anyone who isn’t, Tae-chan. No – Jugem Jugem, _no_.” A firm push foils Jugem Jugem’s attempt to clamber onto his master’s stomach. Another firm push foils his second attempt, and Kyuubei sits up. “Go and wash your hands, Jugem Jugem. Did you remember to pack your wetwipes? They’re in – excuse me, Tae-chan—” as the pitch of the conversation drops to a confidential level, “—they’re in the side pocket of your bag, Jugem Jugem. They are. I saw you put them there.” Jugem Jugem seems unconvinced. “They are,” Kyuubei tells him again, and gets up. “We’ll have a look together, then. Would you like that?”

The midday sun is high above them, dazzling bright. Tae shades her eyes against it and watches Jugem Jugem racing headlong down the slope towards the motorbike, and Kyuubei skidding down after him, and the very few concerns that had dared to rise up in her evaporate, without fanfare, to nothing. 

Matters always seem so simple once she’s talked them out with Kyuubei. Her doubts and hesitations have a habit of fading away once she’s talked them out with Kyuubei; her faith in herself has a way of surging back, renewed and twice as strong, once she’s talked anything out with Kyuubei. She’s quite sure she’s not the only one who feels it, either: it’s been a mutually beneficial side-effect of their friendship since its very earliest days. When someone else has such utter confidence in you, it’s a wonderful reminder that _you_ should have utter confidence in you, too. 

Tae’s sure of herself: it’s not just implausible that taking this little holiday might have been the wrong decision – it’s impossible. 

 

+++

 

The excitable lakeside tourist promotions that start appearing beside the road as the afternoon winds on are far more impressive than the lake itself, which has neither scenery nor bathing water to recommend it. But the town along its nearest shore has shops, and a supermarket, and more than adequate provisions for all the other tourists who, like Tae, have found themselves lured in by the false promise of a lake with water that would bear little to no resemblance to raw sewage sludge; and here in this miserable little town, she’s quite sure she can find everything she wants. 

A letting agency is her highest priority. Very soon, Tae is the letting agency’s highest priority, too; the amount of cash she riffles idly through while discussing rental prices ensures it. And a map, too – but that she leaves to Kyuubei, because the map stand is very near to the newspaper stand, and of its own accord she finds her attention wandering in that direction instead, scanning through the front pages as quickly as she can, as unobtrusively as she can, just on the off chance that—

“Should we get one?” asks Kyuubei, materialising at her side with the usual startling silence. 

Tae jumps. “Kyuu-chan!— _oh_ , you gave me a fright...! But no, we’d better not – I shouldn’t think anything interesting has happened in Edo since we left, anyway. I doubt anything interesting _could_ happen in Edo, given that we’ve left.” Something small and heavy is pulling at the back of her jacket. Jugem Jugem clambers up onto her shoulder and settles there, his tail flicking, swishing through her ponytail; when she reaches up, he takes a grip on her finger as firm as though he owns it. 

“He likes you,” says Kyuubei, watching them both with a look that’s really only five percent nausea from lingering travel sickness at the most, by now; the rest is ninety-five percent affection, and it occurs to Tae that she feels quite the same. A monkey choosing her for his temporary throne isn’t quite the calibre of flattery she’s used to, but she’s flattered by it all the same. 

The evening is starting to lose its heat by the time they make it out to the rental home, dirt kicking up in dusty red clouds beneath the wheels of the motorbike. Ten minutes’ drive from the centre of the town lies a quiet road of tiny, steep-roofed rentals, looking gloomily out across the untroubled beige waters of the lake. A lumpy two-person buggy is parked outside the nearest home in the row; there’s a bicycle chained to the front of another; and otherwise they seem unoccupied, forlorn on this otherwise empty stretch of shore. 

Much like the lake itself, the homes looked better on the tourist promotions; but much like the lake, that doesn’t matter. A bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen: at least for the moment, it’s everything they need. 

Tae runs herself a bath as the sky outside is beginning to turn orange, and stays there, soaking away the travelling dirt and the peculiar aches of long-distance motorbiking and the last remnants of concern about whatever’s been left behind in her wake, until the sky beyond the bathroom’s frosted window has turned deep navy. Her bathwater has begun to cool, and she has yet to unpack her new groceries in her new kitchen, and from elsewhere in the house the soothing murmur of television is playing, and has been for a while... The night is closing in, and so at last she stirs herself. 

Kyuubei doesn’t look around when Tae slides open the door to the main room, lost too deep in concentration; and Tae gets no chance to raise the matter of their dinner, because the interruption comes at once: 

“Shinpachi-kun’s on television, Tae-chan.”

Tae moves to the sofa with such haste the towel slides from her hair. She clutches it in her lap, clutches her yukata closed, heart already pounding—“So he is,” she says, and so he is. “I wonder what sort of trouble Gin-san’s got him into this time... Really, I leave the city for – what? Three days? Three days, and _already_ poor Shin-chan’s—”

“Is that Kondou?” says Kyuubei. 

On the screen a long table faces the camera. There are people behind the table, one of whom is speaking quietly into a tabletop microphone and another of whom is certainly Kondou, but at the furthest end of the table stands Shinpachi: still, silent, his gaze downcast. 

“I think so,” says Tae. “I think – yes, I think so. What in the _world_...?”

“I was just watching the news,” says Kyuubei. “And then this came on. But you’re right, Tae-chan, what you said about changing your character design – I almost didn’t recognise him. Not wearing that.”

 _That_ is Shinpachi’s best hakama – Tae recognises it, and she recognises too her own meticulous handiwork in its neat, immaculate creases. Over the sound of her heartbeat in her ears, she can hardly hear what’s being said. She touches Kyuubei’s knee without tearing her eyes from the screen. “Do you think you could turn it up a little, Kyuu-chan?” 

And at the same time, the camera moves in on Shinpachi. “—means the world to me. She _is_ the world to me,” he’s saying, his voice crackly in the microphone. His expression is oddly blank: recently stunned, perhaps, or shellshocked. There’s no colour left in his face. He’s still not looking up to meet the camera’s eye. “And it isn’t just me who – I mean, I love her. But we all love her. We all – _everyone_ loves her, and if anyone knows – if there’s anyone who can, can... If you can help, then help. _Please_ help. Help me, and help her. That’s what – thank you,” Shinpachi says abruptly, and bows just as abruptly. 

When he straightens, his expression is still blank, his face still colourless. The room on screen erupts with the strobing, flickering light of dozens of camera flashes going off at once. 

Tae’s hand still rests on Kyuubei’s knee; involuntarily her grip tightens, and Kyuubei’s intake of breath is enough to knock her, quite suddenly, from her single-minded focus. The television is murmuring, her damp towel is balled up in her lap, their travel bags are spilled open on the floor before them – she returns to the real world with a not at all unpleasant jolt. 

On the screen, someone else has begun to talk. 

“Switch it off, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae. 

Kyuubei looks at her uncertainly. 

“I’m sure it’s nothing worth worrying about,” says Tae, by way of gentle reassurance. By way of further reassurance she pats Kyuubei’s knee again, and either that or the happiness of her smile is reassurance enough: Kyuubei relaxes at once, far less uncertain and far more comforted; the television switches off. The start-of-holiday excitement that’s been simmering in her since the morning they first left has begun to reach the boil; like the flame’s been turned up beneath her evening meal, what was quietly simmering has started bubbling, hot and anticipatory and equally as certain to result in something wonderful as every single other time she’s ever turned up the flame beneath her evening meal. “And I’m sure Gin-san has it all in hand, anyway. Doesn’t he always? Now – tell me, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae, all business, “what _would_ you like for dinner?”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Another day rises bright and clear. The still, untroubled brown waters of the lake look a little less repulsive in the sunshine, glistening like some sort of meat sauce partially congealed; and outside the door, across the narrow road, a slope of bare dirt and tangled shrubbery leads all the way down to the water’s edge. 

“But I don’t recommend it,” says Kyuubei, on returning from an investigation. “Jugem Jugem threw some faecal matter into the water and it didn’t splash. Or sink. And now there’s faecal matter in the water, anyway.”

“We’ll find better lakes,” promises Tae, whose mood is so supremely, untouchably happy on this particular sunny morning that she feels quite sure she could promise Kyuubei a hundred lakes – all of them clean and calm and clear, and all of them certified completely free of water-borne contagions – and be sure that together they’d find every one of them before the day was out. “We’ll find all sorts of better things, Kyuu-chan. I’m sure of it. I couldn’t be surer.” 

It’s the kind of happiness where it feels like a given that the world itself will go out of its way to please her; it’s the kind of happiness that radiates like sunshine, and which is just as likely to incinerate anyone who tries to interfere with it. Kyuubei’s grave expression has already dissolved into a smile; and they’ve been on the road hardly five minutes before, with a burst of fresh joy, Tae discovers that the digital speedometer doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of just what speeds her motorcycle can reach if its driver has adequate determination and inadequate fear – her heart soars, and her speed soars... 

Until Jugem Jugem soars too, catapulted from the bike by a sudden turn and an insufficiently tight grip on Kyuubei’s collar, and only rescues himself by seizing onto the flapping tail of his master’s coat, after which Tae does her best to keep to slightly more monkey-friendly rates of acceleration. 

In a sun-baked valley not far from the lake, there’s a town with a busy, old-fashioned centre. Trams run through its streets on rails, rather than soaring through the streets on hover-tracks; their heavy diesel smell has settled thickly over every street in town. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen one of those since I was little,” Tae says thoughtfully, as a tram goes rattling by. Its wheels clatter in its tracks; a gust of thin grey smoke billows out behind it. 

“The streets are too narrow,” says Kyuubei, peering up, eye shaded against the sun. “And the buildings are too close together. Nothing could fly down here.”

It’s true: the streets are so narrow, their upper stories leaning so close together, that it seems rather like every technological development of the last decade or so has completely passed this region by – even a hoverboard would have a hard time finding a flight path through these close-crammed rooftops.

In the shopping streets, there’s not a single multi-multi-storey department store. On the adverts pasted to the walls, only humans model clothes. Apart from a yellow-gilled tour guide passing out flyers in the high street for a nearby pottery museum, every person they pass by looks far more human than not; apart from one small restaurant promising a taste of ‘ _Exotic Cuisine!!!!_ ’ – American, Amanto – it’s like the invasion never happened here at all. 

“Isn’t it peculiar?” Tae says, hushed. She stops to see what Kyuubei’s looking at, peering in at a window display of mobile phones the size of shoeboxes, with stubby antennae as thick as a finger. ‘ _Hot Off The Shelves From The Capital!_ ’ promises the poster, but she can’t imagine anyone in the capital would buy one as anything other than a doorstop.“I shouldn’t think anyone here has ever left the planet, have they?”

“They might not even have left the district,” says Kyuubei, and the thought of that is so momentous that both of them walk on in silence for a moment, chilled by the possibility. 

Locals are bustling through the narrow shopping streets, none of them with a glance to spare for the two of them. “Oh, look at _her_ – no one ties their obi like that in Edo anymore, Kyuu-chan, _no one_... We really must be in the middle of nowhere,” Tae says, happily. A moment later, a thought strikes. “If they’re all this out of touch with civilisation, Kyuu-chan... do you suppose they pay attention to the Edo news out here?”

Kyuubei gives it due consideration. “I don’t see why they’d be interested.” 

“No,” says Tae, thoughtfully. “No, nor do I.” 

And she pushes her sunglasses onto her head and blinks in the sudden bright sunshine. 

Today the horizon seems broader, the skies seem clearer; ever since the previous evening’s news report, even Tae’s sense of freedom has seemed freer. The whole world seems like it’s grown to five times the size overnight, and all of it could quite easily be hers. 

 

+++

 

On the way back, as the light is fading and the roads are emptying, Tae slows to a stop in a stretch of desolate-looking industrial land. The warehouses seem empty; the wasteland fenced in around them seems deserted. She jumps from her seat and hurries to the nearest fence. 

“Tae-chan...?”

“I’ll only be a minute,” Tae promises, as she gives the wire fence a shake. It rattles, but it holds. She starts to climb. “There’s just a little something I need to get sorted first, that’s all.” 

Kyuubei takes barely half a second to digest this. “Can I help?” 

Tae clambers over the fence’s jagged top and jumps down. The car park is dusty, empty, ragged with weeds: in other words, it’s ideal. “Could you have a look in the storage compartment, Kyuu-chan? There should be a bag in there. A rubbish bag,” she calls back in a whisper, “full of rubbish. Useless rubbish, which no one will ever need again. Could you bring it over with you?”

Kyuubei does, swiftly, and scrambles over the fence more swiftly still. Together they hurry to the furthest end of the car park, where a drift of litter and weeds have made a dry, rustling pile against the warehouse wall. Tucked beneath her arm, Tae’s rubbish bag is squashy, fat with its contents; she upends it and shakes it out. A cascade of cloth, some blotched with stains, some packaging, some papers—

The little canister of firelighter fuel bounces, and rolls. Kyuubei stops it with a sandal and passes it back to her. 

“Fire is really the only way to be sure your rubbish is gone,” explains Tae, unscrewing the cap. “ _Really_ gone, I mean. Gone and never coming back.” 

The sleeve of a woman’s thin yukata has fallen out of the pile, stained dark and uneven. “I understand,” says Kyuubei, and kicks the sleeve back in. 

The stink of the liquid is vicious and chemical as it splashes out, soaking the litter and the weeds and the soft stained contents of her black binbag; Tae holds her nose closed and shakes out the last few drops, and then she tosses the empty can onto the pile as well. “You’d better stand back,” she says. 

She strikes a match. She throws the match. She grabs Kyuubei by the wrist and runs, and they’re halfway to the fence when the flames realise what they’re doing and _whump_ into life with a huge, soft sound like a colossal pillow hitting a colossal mattress. 

 

+++

 

That night she’s ready for the news, when it comes. A series of bomb attacks at the Mizarian’s galactic embassy, unrest in the Z5 asteroid belt risking severe repercussions for Earth’s local trade links, a haulage truck collision on the main highway into Edo with multiple hospitalisations – all ever so tragic and important, Tae’s sure of it, but really, she can’t help feeling that there’s something _far_ more tragic and important the news should be—

“And now,” says the presenter, looking up from his notes to gaze into the camera with an expression as solemn as a mourner’s, “we’re going over to Ketsuno Ana, reporting for Edo 24 from Kabukichou. Ketsuno-san, are you there?”

“I’m there,” says Ketsuno Ana, and she is. Neon pulses all around her, every building illuminated, every sign flashing out its wares. “The repercussions of this case are being felt throughout the city, and I’m here to talk with just a few of the individuals whose lives have been affected by—”

After a minute or two, Kyuubei asks, “Is that...?” 

“Oryou-chan,” confirms Tae, not looking away even as she pours a second glass of wine. “In a new kimono, I think. _I_ certainly haven’t seen it before. Making the most of her five minutes of fame, I suppose... You know,” she says, a moment later, “I always told her she should learn how to cry more prettily. That’s just the sort of skill a cabaret girl needs up her sleeve, isn’t it? But it’s too late now; all the country’s seen her. She’ll regret it when she watches this back, believe me...”

Girls from the cabaret, girls from other cabarets... Even Jugem Jugem, perching on top of the television’s peaked roof, has the good sense not to swing his tail down and obscure the screen. “— _more_ than a colleague,” weeps the girl on screen, her face buried in her hands, “or a co-worker, or, or – it’s like, like she’s a _sister_ to me! Like the sister I ne-ne-never _had_ ,” forced out through her hiccupping sobs, “because the sister I _do_ have isn’t anywhere near as good or kind as _she_ is, my real sister never helped me out with every little thing the way _she_ does—”

Tae tucks her feet beneath her on the sofa. Satisfaction is blooming like a flower inside her, warm and spreading. She sips her wine; the warmth blooms further. 

“—so much good for this district,” says a man with fewer teeth than he ought to have, and a tattoo creeping up from the open neck of his yukata, and a tone of abject woe. “If you never seen this place before she happened to it, you wouldn’t get it, not properly – but if you imagine a war, right? And everyone’s like, listen, we’re gonna mess you up, and then they do – and then one side gets a nuclear bomb. And they ain’t afraid to use it. And then no one’s getting messed up, on account of they’re too scared of this bomb. That’s her,” he says, and swipes his sleeve mournfully beneath his nose, “that’s what she is. She’s this district’s nuclear deterrent. And I dunno what’s gonna happen to Kabukichou without her.”

“I remember him,” says Kyuubei suddenly. “When you told all the yakuza they were going to spend the weekend litter-picking in Kabukichou, Tae-chan. He said he wouldn’t do it. And he called you... something I would sooner sever my own tongue than repeat.” A moment of silence, while Kyuubei broods on the memory. “And then he had to go to hospital to get the litter-picker removed from where you put it.”

“He did,” says Tae, in fond reminiscence. “Yes, he did. I do remember that.” 

On screen, the camera has returned to Ketsuno Ana, her expression still unshakeably sombre. Tae finds her wine glass empty once again; she sets it down, and rests her head on Kyuubei’s shoulder. “Thank you for your help earlier, Kyuu-chan.”

“It was no trouble, Tae-chan. No trouble at all.”

There’s no need to say what help: An acrid cloud of smoke and firelighter fuel still clings to both of them. It’s a sharp, unpleasant smell, and she shuts her eyes and breathes it in with a sense of deep contentment. 

 

+++

 

Another day breaks with skies so clear that Tae can only take it as evidence of the universe granting her its continued blessing for her little holiday – her little break – her relaxing little getaway. The sun smiles down on her; fate smiles down on her; Jugem Jugem smiles down on her too, at least until Kyuubei coaxes him down from the top of the refrigerator for another quiet talk about the importance of washing his hands before he goes merrily cavorting all over Tae’s nice clean kitchen surfaces. 

But surfaces are easily rinsed, and days as bright as this one should be made the most of. 

“Do you want to drive today?”

“It’s a generous offer, Tae-chan. But I don’t have a licence,” says Kyuubei, in a tone of deep regret. 

“Oh, me neither,” says Tae sunnily. 

For a whole frozen second, Kyuubei’s dismay is clear to read – but then it’s gone again, fought back down, and without a word of discussion both of them are already whole-heartedly committed to pretending it never happened anyway. “I’ve... also never driven anything before, Tae-chan.”

“Nor had I, until the other day—” a flicker of even deeper dismay, there and gone again, “—but there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?” Tae says brightly. “Don’t worry about it, Kyuu-chan. It’s like swimming, isn’t it? If you find yourself swept out to sea, then you learn how to swim. You just have to. It’s a survival instinct. And if you get onto a motorbike in Edo city centre during rush hour, then you learn to drive it. You learn very quickly. That’s how I did it, so I know it’s easy as anything. And when have I ever been wrong before?” 

“In my recollection, Tae-chan? Never.”

“Well, there you go!” says Tae, pleased. “I’ll get us to a main road, and then you can take over from there. It’s just as easy as it looks, Kyuu-chan, I promise; all you’ve got to do is go fast enough you forget to crash, and there won’t be a single problem—” 

—and mostly there isn’t, apart from an unfortunate incident with a furiously busy intersection at the foot of the highway and a zippy little electric car bursting out of nowhere on Kyuubei’s blind side, but Tae slams up her visor and yells a warning as loud as she can and so even _that_ results in no casualties, or at least none that she notices; and only when it comes time to stop does any real problem present itself, and that’s mostly because she forgot to mention how to do it. 

A few perilous minutes follow that realisation. Gravel skids off the road in sheets as the bike swerves. Yelling instructions doesn’t work, and nor does yelling them louder; when she reaches up to open Kyuubei’s visor too it becomes apparent that that’s because Tae’s not the only one yelling – Kyuubei’s wail of nonstop alarm joins the noise of the road. The only thing for it is to do it herself, and so she does – hurls herself as far forward as she can, pressed against Kyuubei’s back, and tries to grab the left-side brake, and the bike veers wildly into the oncoming traffic as even Jugem Jugem starts yammering in panic...

“ _Everyone_ has room for improvement,” Tae says, once the world has mostly stopped whirling around her and she’s confirmed that all of the most important parts of her are where she left them and still securely attached. Kyuubei’s too busy lying on the tarmac and staring dazedly at the sky to reply, but she sits up anyway. “If everyone was perfect at everything, it would be a very boring world; only _some_ people can be perfect at everything, and even those people sometimes make mistakes.” She hesitates. “Like... being terrible driving instructors, for example. I really am sorry, Kyuu-chan; I didn’t even think to check whether—” 

“I’m alive,” says Kyuubei, as though the discovery comes as some surprise – and then again, in a tone of wonder, “I’m alive. I was sure I was dead. Are you at all damaged, Tae-chan?”

“Not a bit, Kyuu-chan.”

Kyuubei’s eye closes in relief. Traffic is still rushing past; the motorcycle is still pitched over on its side, smoking only slightly; scorched rubber tracks curve away behind it into the road itself. “I’d prefer it if you drove us home later, Tae-chan.”

“I think I would too, Kyuu-chan,” Tae says seriously. 

Whichever one of them it is that starts laughing first, it’s contagious and it’s chronic: even though Kyuubei’s too winded to have the breath for it, even though Tae’s stomach aches and her bruised ribs complain about it, neither of them can help it; there’s nothing to do for it but laugh to tears. 

Between them, they get the motorcycle righted. For a while they trudge alongside the road, taking it in turns to wheel its bulk along between them, keeping to the verge where gravel meets grass, until another narrow road peels away from the main one and opens into the mostly empty carpark of a small restaurant. A fringed curtain hangs over its front entrance, between two large grimy windows. On the leftmost window there’s a hand-inked sign: _AMANTO WELCOME_. 

Inside there are only a few customers, and a haze of thin, bluish cigarette smoke behind the bar that overlaps oddly for a moment with Tae’s memory of Snack Otose; but the woman serving here is even older than Otose herself, and without the same commitment to immaculate lipstick. Instead of a menu, she brings them both without asking a bowl of sweet yellowy soup. 

At the back of the restaurant, sitting in a high corner, there’s a squat old television on a shelf. The flashing red-and-blue credits of the afternoon news catch at the edge of Tae’s vision; she turns in her chair and looks up, and sees Kondou – grey and grainy on the screen, speaking to a camera, sombre as she’s ever known him. 

“— _taken in for questioning under the... concerning our dedicated efforts to... male individual whose name is currently not... a case which has affected the whole city_ —”

The channel changes, and Kondou’s gone. In his place is a packed stadium and perky, blurry dancers and tinny pop music. “Something a bit more cheerful, eh?” says the old woman at the bar, and gives them a broad, gap-toothed smile. 

Tae turns back to her lunch. Kyuubei’s watching her, grave as ever; but with the way her heart is pounding, it’s hard to concentrate well enough to read what exactly that sort of graveness might mean. “Do you,” begins Tae, and stops. She reaches across the table and lays her hand on Kyuubei’s, and tries again. “Do you ever feel, Kyuu-chan... like everything’s going your way? Like the world’s about to give you everything you could ever want?” 

“Like... you’re on top of the world, Tae-chan?” 

“ _Exactly_ like that, Kyuu-chan.” 

“Not often. But... sometimes,” says Kyuubei, and looks up from their linked hands with an expression so bright with happiness it’s a mirror for Tae’s own. 

 

+++

 

The futon beside hers is empty when Tae wakes up, and so is the very small futon on the other side of that one. The bedroom door has been slid considerately closed; she opens it, yawning, and listens for a moment – but nothing is as it shouldn’t be. 

The veranda door of the main room is open to an overcast, grey morning. The television has been turned on, though it’s been left considerately muted. Tae passes through to the kitchen; a few minutes later she returns the way she came, glass of water in hand, and stands before the television as she sips it. 

On the screen, a trio of middle-aged women are sitting on the curved sofa of a breakfast show, discussing something in energetic silence. As Tae watches, a video screen on the wall behind the women changes to display an image – grainy, distant, pixelated – of a building that looks remarkably like the Kodoukan dojo. 

The television remote has been placed – thoughtfully – in the middle of the sofa. Tae considers it for a moment, and then she picks it up and turns on the volume. 

“— _some ways, I feel like I know her. Like I really do know her, like she’s my own friend..._”

“ _—and you’re not the only one, Chiho-san – everyone’s big sister, that’s what they’re saying now... But I don’t mind telling you: at my age, all I can see in her is my own daughter, and that just about breaks my heart..._ ”

She leaves the television murmuring softly to itself, and she goes out to the veranda. 

In the dusty little yard at the back of the house, Kyuubei is putting Jugem Jugem through his paces. Very quietly, though: only the occasional skid of a sandal on dirt, and the _swish_ of two very differently-sized branches through the air, and intermittent commentary almost too low to hear – _quick thinking, feint lower, straighten your back, your footwork is growing nimbler_...She sits and watches, fondly, for an unnoticed minute or two; and then Jugem Jugem casts his makeshift sword aside and scrambles up to swing from his master’s ponytail instead, which seems to mark the training session over. 

“Tae-chan. I didn’t want to wake you up,” says Kyuubei, and then adds, in a tone that – as far as Tae can tell – is neither any more nor any less serious than usual, “I turned the television on for you.”

“I noticed,” says Tae. “Thank you, Kyuu-chan.” 

... and for a moment she says nothing else, waiting, with the sort of expectant pause meant to offer an inviting welcome to any lingering questions... 

But no questions come. 

Tae knows what it sounds like when someone is desperately trying to hold themselves back from asking questions they’re afraid to know the answers to – she’s been hearing it from Shinpachi all her life. This isn’t that kind of silence. This is the silence of someone with no questions to ask; a silence that says Kyuubei is content to trust her utterly. 

Gratitude floods her, top to toe. She’s outside in only her rumpled yukata, but she couldn’t feel warmer. 

“I’ve put our breakfast in the oven,” Tae says, instead of _thank you_ , but her relief is blooming in her smile, and she has faith, as she always has faith, that Kyuubei will understand everything else that lies between the lines. 

“— _and you can’t imagine, can you, that anyone could feel that way towards a girl like her... could feel violently towards her..._”

“— _or even if you can imagine it, you don’t want to... But you know what’s keeping me awake, Mariko-san? I keep thinking to myself: what if someone, maybe, not that I like to speculate, what if someone envied her – someone with anger issues, maybe, someone who she trusted, but of course I don’t like to speculate_...”

The television’s quiet murmur underlies their breakfast, and the grey skies roll over slowly into murkiness, but the burned stink of Tae’s expertly cooked rice fills the kitchen, and it would take more than a little gloomy weather to keep their spirits down. Even Jugem Jugem gambols across the tops of the kitchen cupboards with more vigour then usual, his energy revitalised every time his master laughs. 

The clouds are drawing in. A chill is blowing through the open veranda door. Kyuubei slides it closed and everything beyond it ceases to be a problem. 

“— _so you’ve got a beautiful girl, of course, anyone can see that, and by all accounts she’s gentle, sweet-natured, dutiful to her family, all the responsibilities of the world on her shoulders and never says a word to complain about it... and you’ve just got to wonder, haven’t you? If the worst’s happened, god forbid, but if it has – then what kind of monster must have done it...?_”

“We could always head for the coast,” says Tae, tracing a finger across the vast map unfolded on the floor before them. “Somewhere sunny. Somewhere to really make the most of the summer... Or—” She breaks off to rummage through the assortment of glossy leaflets spread out across the floor around them: campsites, luxury hotels, roadside attractions, discount shopping outlets, tourist-trap onsen towns, the promise of a ride on the back of an Amanto-import dragon for the cut-price rate of only ¥60000... “Or – we could keep going west, and make a visit to the Imperial Palace...? But perhaps the city is a bad idea; perhaps it’s too much of a risk...”

“I’ve been through there before,” says Kyuubei, circling it in yellow for _maybe_ anyway. “When I was younger. After I left Edo. But most of it was rubble at the time, so perhaps it’s changed since then.” Yellow and green web together across the map in a complicated system of roadtrip priorities. The pages of Tae’s well-thumbed guidebook are marked and folded in an equally complex reference system. 

Anything is possible; everything is possible; it’s just a matter of deciding where to start and staying away from crowds. 

“— _and that’s just why this case has touched so many hearts across the city, if you ask me – everyone’s known a girl like her, and if they haven’t they’ve wished they had, and no one with a heart can help themselves imagining she’s their own big sister, or their own loving daughter, or their own best friend..._ ”

“I haven’t had an awful lot of holidays before this, really... But a few years ago Shin-chan and I saved up for a weekend away. _Just_ a weekend,” she stresses, and Kyuubei nods, alertly attentive. “Just one night, Kyuu-chan. Just one night snatched away from all the worries and responsibilities of home... But as soon as we got through security in the terminal, Shin-chan started saying he felt sick. And as soon as we got to our seats in the shuttle, he _was_ sick.” 

“Did you leave him behind and go alone, Tae-chan?”

“I didn’t,” says Tae. “I couldn’t. He’s my little brother, Kyuu-chan. I had to take care of him. I had to put his needs before my own.”

A grey mist is rolling slowly in across the lake, reducing the world to their house and nothing more. Rain patters down against the roof, drips steadily from a faulty gutter beyond the veranda door, the sound dull and comforting. Tae sifts through the assortment of tourist pamphlets before her, lost in recollection; and Kyuubei says nothing, only waits, and listens, utterly intent. 

“He said it was food poisoning,” Tae goes on, at last. “I told him it couldn’t have been, because I’d cooked our dinner the night before, and _I_ certainly hadn’t noticed any problems, and anyway, did he really think I’d ever be so careless with our food as to put his health in danger? But that’s what he said.”

The loose gutter outside creaks in a sudden gust of wind, and Jugem Jugem hurls himself into the safety of his master’s lap. Kyuubei’s voice is low. “You should have left him, Tae-chan.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Tae says, distant with thought. “Perhaps I’ve always allowed him to depend on me too much. Perhaps that _is_ my fault... We were going to go to the summer planet,” she says, after a moment, but her voice breaks as she says it. 

“Tae-chan—”

“No,” says Tae, “no – I’ll be fine, Kyuu-chan. I’ll be _fine_ ,” she says again, bravely, and bows her head to contemplate her loss. 

Kyuubei says nothing. Nothing needs to be said. The silence is respectful and it’s grieving; it’s the sort of silence that, at home, would undoubtedly be rudely interrupted by someone suggesting that Tae might consider taking herself a little less seriously. 

In the silence, the television’s murmur seems suddenly louder than before: 

“— _and of course we’re all doing our best to avoid the issue here, no one wants to be the one to say it, but frankly it has to be said: what about the brother...?_ ”

“— _and that interview with Edo 24, you know the one, where he says he’s sure it’ll all turn out fine in the end... I don’t like to speculate, but he didn’t sound worried at all, did he...? Now I’m not making any accusations here, but I will say that if it was my sister..._”

“— _and you’ve only got to open a copy of Shounen Jump to see what his temper’s like, haven’t you...?_ ”

At a touch on her hand, Tae looks up. She follows Kyuubei’s wordless gaze – and sees the footage playing silently over the presenters’ murmured conversation: the main gates of the Shinsengumi headquarters, a figure hurrying out, a heaving swarm of cameras and microphones and assorted journalists closing in around them – the figure dark-haired, wearing blue and white, an arm flung up to hide their face – but then for a moment the arm moves, shoved aside to block a particularly invasive camera, and across the bottom of the screen a caption scrolls: _IMAGE BLURRED TO PRESERVE IDENTITY OF SUSPECT_. 

The only thing blurred is the frames of Shinpachi’s glasses. The rest of him is clear as day, or clear as truth, or clear as the tropical waters of the summer planet that he and Tae never did get to visit; and his expression behind his glasses is frozen by a deep, existential horror. 

“I’ve always thought that what goes around comes around,” Tae remarks vaguely, and turns to the next page of her guidebook. “How would you feel about staying in a residential centre for an intensive week-long abseiling course, Kyuu-chan?”

“Not positive, Tae-chan.”

“Oh, good. Me neither,” Tae says in relief, and turns the page.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Every single time I think I'm already as carried away by my Tae/Kyuubei problem as I could ever possibly be, I end up breaking my own record for the longest fic I've ever written and it turns out I'm totally wrong (BUT I'M GLAD TO BE WRONG!!). Next chapter should be along soonish, and in the meantime I'm [over here on tumblr](http://www.suitablyskippy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading, and any comments would be appreciated! ♥]


	3. Chapter 3

 

“There’s been a development,” says Kondou. “And I wanted you to be the first to know. You deserve to hear this from me, Shinpachi-kun, not from some reporter.”

“Thank you,” says Shinpachi. His voice is trembling with the effort of keeping it from trembling. On his right sits Kagura, clutching firmly at his sleeve; on his left sits Gintoki, one arm slung behind Shinpachi on the couch in careless reassurance. “You’ve – whatever it is, Kondou-san, I just want to, to... I want to tell you that I’m grateful. For how hard you’ve been working. And for – for everything, for...”

But the threat of tears overtakes him. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and fights for self-control, and Kagura reaches up to wipe his nose with her own sleeve. Her expression is tragic. “Pachi...”

Gintoki rests his hand on Shinpachi’s shoulder. “You’ve got us.” His voice is quiet, but resolute. “And we’ve got you. Nothing’ll ever change that, Patsuan.”

On the opposite couch, Kondou clears his throat. “The development is – well. Three things. First of all,” he says, and from an inside pocket he produces a clear plastic bag with a book inside it – a notebook, only a little one, a little pink and yellow notebook with a floral pattern around its edges, “first of all, we found Otae-san’s diary.”

“You found – but,” says Shinpachi, for a moment so surprised that his voice doesn’t fail him, “but my sister doesn’t keep a diary. She’s never kept a diary, Kondou-san. She always says that anyone who has enough free time to spend it writing about how fascinating their life is probably doesn’t have a very fascinating life at all.”

“We found Otae-san’s diary,” Kondou says stolidly. “And it gives us reason to believe... I’m sorry,” his own voice cracking – a deep breath, his hands fisting in the knees of his uniform trousers – and he’s the consummate police chief when he forces himself to look up again: sombre, dutiful, reliable, “I’m sorry. Excuse me. It gives us reason to believe that this is now a murder investigation. And—”

—a cry of pain from Kagura, cut off when she claps her hand across her mouth; and an exhale from Gintoki as hard as a boot to the stomach; and between them Shinpachi doesn’t move, hardly breathes, though the last of his colour leaves him and the trembling worsens, visibly—

“—it also gives us reason to ask you to come in with us, Shinpachi-kun. To the station,” says Kondou. “We want to talk to you.” 

“You already talked to him!” cries Kagura. 

“And it seems like he didn’t tell us everything,” says Kondou, who seems to feel as much pain on saying it as the rest of them feel on hearing it. “It seems like there might have been more than a few things he was hiding. So I’m not asking you, Shinpachi-kun. I’m telling you. This is an order from the Shinsengumi.”

“No,” says Shinpachi. He says it almost conversationally. He moves his mouth soundlessly for a moment before he manages to make any more words leave it, and then they all blurt out at once. “Kondou-san, you know I didn’t – you _know_ I didn’t! You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt my sister! You _know_ how much I love her, you _know_ I’d do anything to keep her safe, you _know_ she’s the world to me—”

But at his side Kagura lets out a sound of such raw anguish that he’s drowned out. She leaps to her feet, hands pressed across her face – she knocks aside his instinctive gesture of comfort, and she turns and runs, straight from the room, sobbing uncontrollably, hysterically – the front door slams open, and slams shut. 

Shinpachi’s already on his feet. “Kagura-chan—!”

But at his other side Gintoki lets out a sound of such raw anguish that he’s drowned out. He leaps to his feet, hands pressed across his face – he knocks aside Shinpachi’s instinctive gesture of comfort, and he turns and runs, straight from the room, sobbing uncontrollably, hysterically – the front door slams open, and slams shut. 

“ _Gin-san_!” yells Shinpachi, and races after them, Kondou in hot pursuit. He slams back the front door and hurls himself out, straight to the railing, scanning desperately up the street—

They haven’t gone far. 

“—my best friend in _all the world_ , uh-huh, but I always, always... I always _thought_ ,” howls Kagura, still wretchedly sobbing, into the camera of Edo 24’s on-the-street roving news crew, “I always _thought_ something was wrong with him, uh-huh!” 

Shinpachi’s desperate cry freezes in his throat. 

“I always thought he’d snap one day, but I was too afraid of him to say anything, uh-huh, I didn’t know what he’d do – and now, now – _now_ —” 

“And now it’s too late,” finishes Gintoki. He wraps his arm around Kagura’s shoulders – gentle, sombre, fatherly – and hugs her close as she cries. “It’ll be okay, Kagura-chan. Let it all out, let it all out. He can’t hurt you now. He’ll never hurt anyone again. He fooled you, and he fooled me, and he fooled Otae-san; but now the world will see him for who he is.” A pause, weighty and perfectly timed; and then Gintoki looks straight into the camera. His voice drops an octave. “For... _what_ he is.”

“A monster,” says Kagura. Somehow, all of the most strident edges have already left her voice. She rubs her big blue eyes and gazes upwards, watery and fragile and innocent. “Boss lady was the most perfect woman in the world, uh-huh, the prettiest and the cleverest and the kindest and everyone loved her, and Pachi – and _Pachi_ —”

“—couldn’t get a job,” Gintoki tells the camera, quietly confidential, as he comfortingly strokes Kagura’s hair, “couldn’t get a girl, spent all his time hanging out with a gang of unemployed losers... Fundamentally pathetic, if you ask me. Destined for uselessness. A real good-for-nothing. It’s easy to imagine how the jealousy must have consumed him.”

“And then the jealousy... turned to _hate_ ,” says Kagura. “Probably.”

“And then the hate... turned to _violence_ ,” says Gintoki. “Probably.”

“Would you two be willing to appear on our breakfast show tomorrow morning?” blurts the reporter behind the camera. “You must have access to such fascinating material, such _personal_ insights...”

“For a fee,” says Gintoki. 

“A big one,” says Kagura. “To help me deal with all my emotional damage, uh-huh. I’ve got a _lot_ of emotional damage. I can tell you all about it, if you want.”

“Yes, _please_ ,” says the reporter. 

The easiest way to deal with nightmares is to offer no resistance and put your faith in the belief that, sooner or later, this will have to end, because sooner or later you’ll _have_ to wake. At the railing of the Yorozuya’s balcony, Kondou’s hand falls heavily onto Shinpachi’s shoulder. “Let’s go,” he says. 

And without a word, stunned beyond resistance, Shinpachi goes. 

 

+++

 

Some three hundred and fifty miles away, rooted to the spot as busy crowds of shoppers flow around her, staring through the colossal front window of a department store at the dozens of widescreen TVs on display within, all of them tuned to the same channel... Some three hundred and fifty miles away, her shopping bags containing a summery faux-silk yukata, a small box of peaches, and a selection of regional souvenirs... Some three hundred and fifty miles away, watching the end of the live Edo 24 broadcast in wide-eyed silence, Tae presses her fingertips to her mouth and says, “Kyuu-chan...”

“I didn’t know you kept a diary either,” says Kyuubei. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t really call it a diary,” says Tae. “Diaries are dull, for example, and I made sure mine wasn’t dull at all. And diaries are all about the tedious true facts of someone’s real life. But mine...” 

She looks at Kyuubei. Kyuubei’s looking at her. Behind her hand, Tae’s smile is blooming; and beneath a remarkably floppy sunhat, Kyuubei’s is as well. 

At the same time, every one of the dozens of screens before them changes to adverts. “I hid it in my underwear drawer,” Tae confesses, leaning in to whisper it. “I knew Shin-chan would never look there. And I knew Kondou-san would _definitely_ look there.”

She looks, again, at Kyuubei. Kyuubei’s looking, again, at her. 

Both of them burst out laughing. 

“Tae-chan, did you see his _face_ —”

“Was that gorilla crying? Was he really? Oh, Kyuu-chan – ‘this is an order from the Shinsengumi’, you know he was feeling _ever_ so important—” She catches Kyuubei’s hand and tugs, hurrying away down the broad central street of the second largest shopping mall outside of Edo, as the sunlight fills her heart and swells inside it. It’s hardly as though she’s unused to being the author of faultlessly orchestrated plans that run exactly as intended and unfold with an almost musical sense of choreography, benefiting her and her alone... but the truth, hidden somewhere deep down inside, is that Tae’s been a little anxious that perhaps this time she might have bitten off more than she could chew. 

But she hasn’t. Of course she hasn’t. Even from some three hundred and fifty miles away, it couldn’t be clearer that all is proceeding according to plan. 

Specifically, it’s proceeding according to Tae’s plan. 

 

+++

 

The weather has cleared up since the storm of their last night by the lake. Back on the road, the days grow hotter and hotter until every midday wavers uncertainly beneath a shimmering heat-haze. It’s impossible to drive when the sun’s like that, and not only because it makes it difficult to see the painted road markings – though Tae has very little patience for road markings at the best of times – so their lunch breaks extend to become ever more festive occasions, while the rest of the country bakes and simmers in the summertime heat. 

“The problem is that people always try to put you in a box. Not you in particular, Kyuu-chan. You in general. Although,” says Tae, feeling rather more introspective than usual thanks to the recently emptied spread of plates before her and the impressively sparkling ocean view stretching out beside her, “probably also you in particular, Kyuu-chan. No one escapes it. That’s why it’s a problem.”

“The spirit of the samurai can never be confined,” Kyuubei assures her. “Even if you’re in a box.”

“That’s very true,” says Tae, unaccountably moved. The restaurant’s walls mostly consist of glass, in quantities that make it clear it’s far classier than any restaurant that’s ever set up shop in Kabukichou; this isn’t a restaurant that has to worry about any of its customers violently evicting any of its other customers through the windows. “And just think about how much people miss when they put someone in a box! If the box says _big sister_ , for example, then they think of everything they know about big sisters, and they don’t think of anything else, and they think they know everything there is to know about you. But they don’t. They don’t... _at all_.”

“People try to tell you what you can be,” says Kyuubei. 

“They do,” says Tae, with feeling. “They really do.”

“Or what you _have_ to be,” says Kyuubei, and Jugem Jugem perks his big round ears curiously at the force in his master’s tone. “Or that you’re betraying your ancestral pedigree if you prefer not to keep your sandals trimmed in gold leaf. I know just what you mean, Tae-chan. I know... _just_ what you mean.”

Tae believes it. “And how could you blame anyone who gets fed up of that?” she asks, spreading her hands helplessly wide. The ocean beyond the wall of windows is dazzlingly blue and glittering like a cabaret club on discount night. “How could anyone _not_ get fed up of it? You can’t expect people to live like that, Kyuu-chan. You can’t expect people to just put up with being sorted into a neat little box and dismissed like that.”

“I’d never put you in a box, Tae-chan.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae, and means it with all her heart. “I’d never put you in a box either. But nowadays it seems like we’re the only ones left with even _that_ much basic respect for others.”

In the quiet that falls, Jugem Jugem surreptitiously helps himself to the leftovers from his master’s plate. 

“ _Big sister_ ,” Tae says again, at last. She sighs, and shakes her head. “There’s _so_ much more to me than just being everyone’s big sister, Kyuu-chan.”

“I know,” says Kyuubei, and hesitates for a moment, contemplating the bright waters beyond the window. “I can honestly say... I’ve never once thought of you as my big sister, Tae-chan.”

“Not even once, Kyuu-chan?” 

“Not even once, Tae-chan,” says Kyuubei frankly. “If you were my big sister, I would hate it. It would be my nightmare. Just the thought of it disturbs me.”

Carefully, Tae lifts Jugem Jugem up from his side of the table and sets him down again on the other side. Then she reaches out for Kyuubei’s hand in the place where Jugem Jugem was, and not even the disconcerting warmth of that particular patch of tablecloth can detract from her sincerity. “That means a lot to me,” she says. 

On the far side of the restaurant, above and behind the bar, there’s a big flatscreen television playing with the news turned on and the volume turned off. A flash of purple catches Tae’s eye, and her sudden change of expression catches Kyuubei’s, and both of them turn to look up at the subtitles scrolling across the screen. 

— _you want to know what I think then I think there’s something wrong with you. All of you. Either everyone in this city got severe irreversible brain damage at the exact same time ten days ago or the mass amnesia plot’s being dragged out for another tired rehash and which is more likely? Neither. Neither. You’re all out of your minds you jumped-up bunch of_ — __  
  
The subtitles scroll impassively across the screen – no emphasis, no exciting punctuation. 

The news broadcast is coming from a warehouse depot, but the worker being interviewed has been shoved from both the seat of his forklift truck and his position before the camera by a raging, shrieking vision in lilac. There’s no sound, but it’s quite clear she’s shrieking. It’s also quite clear she’s Sacchan. The fact she’s shrieking and the fact she’s Sacchan are really just one and the same. 

— _only person in the city who remembers what Otae-san was actually like. Seems to me I’m the only one who remembers what that demon bitch from hell was like. Everyone’s wasting their breath going on about how sweet and beautiful and gentle she was but she was a stuck-up little prude and a danger to the public and not even that attractive if we’re being honest which I am even though no one else in this entire city is right now_ — __  
  
The subtitles come to an abrupt halt when a member of the news crew dives out from behind the camera to tackle her to the ground. For a moment the screen shows only the empty forklift truck, and an occasional thrashing toss of lilac hair as the struggle in the dirt continues – and then the original interview subject returns cautiously to his seat, and the subtitles return to the planned renovation work in Edo’s industrial district, and somewhere in the distance of the shot a purple blur launches from the ground to a warehouse roof...

After all these years, it’s the matter of a moment for Tae and Kyuubei to reach a silent consensus: it never happened. Without discussion they pay, and leave, and cast aside the whole unfortunate experience-that-never-was behind them in the dust of the motorbike’s roaring engine. 

 

+++

 

A confidential source within the Shinsengumi has started leaking documents before the week is out. 

“‘I remember when Shin-chan was ever so small’,” says Kyuubei, reading aloud from the newspaper spread wide over the end of both their sun loungers, “‘and I gave him a dear little kitten to be his pet. But without telling me he used to take it to the local kennels, and drop it in with the dogs to watch it run, and only rescue it at the very last minute, and when at last I finally caught him at it he just laughed, and laughed, and laughed...’” A pause, possibly for sombre reflection, possibly to regain composure. Tae takes a sip from her cocktail and regards the horizon through her sunglasses with tranquil serenity. “‘I’ve never told anyone but you about that, Diary. Because I know anyone else would just get the wrong impression. Shin-chan’s a sweet boy, and if that awful business with the kitten was anyone’s fault then it was mine for giving him the kitten in the first place.’” 

A silence doesn’t fall, but it feels as though it should do. There’s an odd scratching sound from the thatched sun umbrella above them as Jugem Jugem scampers back and forth across it; there’s noise from the few children at the shallow end of the hotel pool, tipping each other off their bright plastic floats; beyond the pool is the quiet lapping of the ocean itself, shining golden as the evening draws in. 

Kyuubei turns a page. “‘No one can ever know this, Diary, but sometimes I have such awful thoughts. Today, for example, I humbly gave back a big warm pile of clean laundry to Shin-chan and all he said was, _why the hell did it take you so long? I want it faster next time, woman_.Oh, I’m ashamed to even admit it here... but for a moment, I felt hurt. I really did. I felt like he was being ungrateful.’” 

Another pause. Tae takes another sip. She doesn’t have much left to sip; very soon, she’ll have to get something new to sip. Her own words sound different in Kyuubei’s low voice, sound unfamiliar; they sound like the kind of words a news presenter might read out with sombre respect on an exclusive evening broadcast, pausing every now and then to look into the camera with an expression of professional grief. __  
  
“‘But as soon as I stopped to think about it, of course, I realised that it’s me who’s the ungrateful one. Why should I expect poor Shin-chan to be grateful when all I’m doing is my duty? I’m his big sister, after all. It’s only proper that he should expect a certain level of responsibility from me. And I’ll certainly make sure I do his laundry faster next time. I’ll stay up scrubbing all night if I need to.’”

Thoughtfully, Tae stirs the luminescent contents of her cocktail with a small paper umbrella. Then she pushes up her sunglasses and looks at Kyuubei. “Too much?” she asks. 

“Not at all,” says Kyuubei. “It’s very moving, Tae-chan. If I didn’t know better, I’d ask Shinpachi-kun to answer for his misdeeds myself. Truthfully, I’m considering asking him to answer for them anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll have answered for them before this is over,” says Tae, sunnily complacent. “I’m _quite_ sure he’ll—”

—but then it strikes her: this is _her_ holiday. Or rather: it’s _their_ holiday. And what’s the point of a holiday taken without a little brother in tow if that brother is still all they ever talk about? What’s the point of getting away from it all if they _don’t_ get away from it? What happens in Edo has no business leaving Edo, and certainly has no business interfering in Tae’s life. 

This is Tae’s holiday, and it ought to revolve around Tae. Or rather: it’s _their_ holiday, and it ought to revolve around both of them. 

She sits up on her sun lounger and her bare knee presses against Kyuubei’s; perhaps the novelty of a summer dress after wearing practical motorbiking clothes all day, perhaps the golden warmth of the evening, perhaps the rising giddiness from her sunset-coloured cocktails, but affection hits her in a rush from the point of contact. “Let’s talk about something else,” says Tae. Deliberately, she crumples the nearest edge of the newspaper with her foot; deliberately, she shifts nearer. “Let’s forget all about that, Kyuu-chan. Let’s just enjoy our holiday. Where’s that cocktail menu gone?”

Kyuubei’s expression is odd for a moment. Odd how, Tae couldn’t say; but then Jugem Jugem swings himself down from his patrol of the umbrella to scramble down his master’s ponytail as though it’s nothing but a convenient express route to the sun loungers, and in the effort to stop him making a break for the pool itself, the oddness is gone: Kyuubei’s laughing, and against that not even Jugem Jugem can sulk for long. Tae rather finds she knows the feeling. 

A little later, as she’s ordering drinks inside, the jingle for the evening news bulletin rings merrily out from the television above the bar. It’s tempting to listen in – but she doesn’t. She fishes out her money from the compartment hidden in the fake sole of her sandal, and pays, and goes back out into the brilliant tropical shine of the evening sun without even looking up to see the headlines. She has far better ways to spend her time. 

 

+++

 

Night gathers slowly, but the insects swarming in the growing gloom gather quickly. Together they make a tactical retreat to the indoor bar, where the pool’s underwater lights glow an unearthly blue in the darkness through the windows, and stay there until the number of tiny colourful paper umbrellas collected on the table begins changing every time Tae tries to look at them straight on. She’s a cabaret girl; reckless alcohol consumption is how she makes her living; she drinks heavily, nightly, and professionally, but it’s been longer than she can remember since it left her feeling quite so giddily silly as this. 

Jugem Jugem has fallen asleep on the tray of a baby’s highchair. Kyuubei scoops him up, walks into a table, and rebounds with quiet dignity. 

The carpet in the hotel lobby is so thick that their sandals hardly make a sound. “Quiet as we can,” says Tae, her voice a stage-whisper, holding tight to Kyuubei’s hand for balance as much as anything, “we can’t wake anyone up. No one knows we’re here, Kyuu-chan.” 

“ _We_ know we’re here,” Kyuubei whispers back. 

“No one _else_ knows we’re here, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae, in prompt clarification. 

“No one else in all the world, Tae-chan,” says Kyuubei, in prompt agreement. 

“And they mustn’t find out, Kyuu-chan. So we’ve got to be quiet. Quieter. _Extremely_ quiet.”

“Quiet as mice, Tae-chan,” whispers Kyuubei, which strikes Tae as funnier than almost anything she’s ever heard before and their progress up the stairs is temporarily halted by a shared sudden, uncontrollable fit of giggling that, urgently stifled, sounds more like wind shushing through a field of long grass. 

A brief whispered consultation on the next landing concludes their room is probably on the second floor. They set off along it. “Quiet as can be,” says Tae, and drops her voice to an even more confidential hush to explain: “Because I’m dead in Edo.” 

Kyuubei whispers back, “What am _I_ in Edo?” 

“What are you in Edo? Why, you’re – you’re,” says Tae, and stops, and thinks. A cloud of something unidentifiable passes across her thoughts; she turns to Kyuubei with a frown of confusion, and sees her own frown of confusion mirrored back at her. “What _are_ you in Edo, Kyuu-chan?” she says, bewildered. 

Kyuubei’s frown of confusion is growing deeper. So is Tae’s. 

“You’re... rich,” says Tae, feeling rather like she’s trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with mittens on her hands: fumbling for the pieces, too clumsy to grip a single thing. “You’re... _famous_. Your family—but you haven’t been. Have you? On the news?” Mittens on her hands _and_ a blindfold across her eyes: fumbling for the pieces, with no idea where they are, or what they are, or how the jigsaw’s even supposed to look when it’s all together. “And I’m – if _I’m_ dead in Edo... and everyone knows you’re my best friend in the world, and _you’re_ gone...”

It’s too much. The train of thought had hardly stopped at her station – it had slowed, and Tae had run alongside for as long as she could; but now it picks up speed and chugs away into the night, billowing steam behind it, until it disappears. 

She looks blankly at Kyuubei. Kyuubei looks blankly back. “Why _aren’t_ you in the news, Kyuu-chan?”

The kind of pause that she recognises, even through her haze of bewilderment, as Kyuubei turning over a thought until the thought is ready to face its public. “I... have no idea, Tae-chan. No idea at all.”

“But I planned this perfectly,” says Tae, feeling almost perturbed enough to remember how it felt to be sober. “I did. I _know_ I did, Kyuu-chan—”

Kyuubei’s about to laugh: Tae recognises the sound at once, and manages to clap her hand across it even more quickly than Kyuubei does, and then they’re _both_ about to laugh, past midnight in the deserted silent corridor of a three-star hotel where no one else in all the world knows they are, the lights overhead turned down low out of consideration for the guests sleeping peacefully in the rooms around them. “This is very strange,” whispers Tae. “Kyuu-chan, this is _very_ strange.”

Kyuubei nods, looking up at her. The breath against her palm is quick and hot, and shaky with the effort of not laughing. Her own feels just as quick, just as shaky. Not with laughter, though. That’s gone. She didn’t notice when it went, but it’s gone. She takes her hand away. Then she puts it back, carefully, against Kyuubei’s cheek. 

It’s her holiday. She should have what she wants. It’s their holiday; they should both have what they want. 

Tae dips her head; and though it’s only the briefest kiss, her heart is thrumming through a thousand beats per second when it’s done. 

The corridor is still silent. Its lights are still dim. Kyuubei’s still looking up at her. In a sudden rush, the warmth inside her has bloomed again, her giddiness has surged again; Tae lets out her breath and it sounds like a laugh of relief, overcome by it, and she puts her other hand to Kyuubei’s cheek and feels the heat there, between her palms, and again she—

“Don’t,” says Kyuubei suddenly. “Wait – _don’t_ —”

Tae jerks back at once, too fast – the world reels around her. “You don’t want—”

“ _No_ —” instantly, “—I do, I _do_ – I _do_ , Tae-chan, but—”

“If you don’t want to, then I won’t. I _won’t_ ,” vows Tae, her whisper twice as passionate from the alcohol surging hotly through her bloodstream, “I _won’t_ —”

“ _No_ ,” Kyuubei says in anguish, “I mean – Tae-chan, I have...”

Tae’s never seen someone look quite so much like every word from their own mouth was causing them unbearable physical pain. She follows the path of Kyuubei’s wretched gaze: down between the two of them, to Jugem Jugem, cradled fast asleep against his master’s chest. 

“I’ll wake him up,” says Kyuubei. 

Understanding breaks through Tae’s confusion like sunrise through mist. 

Memories splice together like frames in a badly-edited old film reel, after that – here one moment, there the next – with nothing between them, or at least nothing she can remember the instant after it’s done. The room key is found – the door unlocked, relocked. In the gloom within, the digital clock is blinking an indecent hour of the morning. The very small heap of hotel blankets awaiting its very small guest receives its guest, who burrows deeper without waking. In her hurry Tae kicks off one sandal and forgets the other, and wheels around without waiting to Kyuubei, who pushes up to kiss her back as urgently as though every single moment is likely to be the last, finding her hands, her shoulders, her waist, an exploration as hasty and indecisive as Tae’s own – and though it’s only that, nothing more, it feels like the start of demolition work on a dam that’s been a lifetime in the building. 

 

+++

 

The slow, even breathing of someone trying very hard to sound like they’re still asleep is the only sound when Tae wakes the next morning. She opens her eyes, and sees the bedside table. Last night... 

The morning bleariness dissolves at once. _Last night_ – she’s been awake hardly twenty seconds and already her face is hot. The stubborn effort it must be taking Kyuubei to keep on breathing like someone still sleeping, like someone not lying very much as painfully awake as Tae – if she weren’t so used to sharing a room with Kyuubei, and waking up in the same room as Kyuubei, and listening to what it sounds like when Kyuubei really _is_ still asleep beside her, she probably wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. 

She can, though. She rolls onto her back and tries to pretend it’s the movement of someone who’s very much asleep. Kyuubei probably isn’t fooled. 

Whichever one of them remembered to close the curtains last night didn’t do a very good job of it; whichever one of them it was probably got distracted partway through. Light spills in through the gap. The sky beyond looks cloudless. 

“Kyuu-chan?”

The carefully deep and regular breathing comes to a halt. “...Tae-chan?”

Her heart is staging a simultaneous escape from out between her ribs and up inside her throat. What feels inexplicably like nerves are shivering somewhere deep inside her stomach. “It gets tiresome to be as generous and selfless as I am all the time,” says Tae. “That’s why I decided to take a little holiday. To be selfish, for once in my life.” 

The distance between their beds is the width of a lampstand. Kyuubei’s looking at her cautiously across it. “I don’t think you’re selfish, Tae-chan.” 

“Oh, good,” says Tae, and, relieved, she sits up, fully dressed except for one sandal. “Being away from home has made me feel – so much... _freer_ , Kyuu-chan.”

“To... be selfish, Tae-chan?”

“To be all sorts of things,” says Tae, and despite herself she feels her face grow hot. 

Kyuubei stares at her for only a moment before jolting upright in sudden, startled realisation of what she means. The distance between their beds is the width of a lampstand: it’s no distance at all, once she’s said it. What’s left of the dam is crumbling in earnest now. 

 

+++

 

And some four hundred miles away, packed so tightly into the studio that even the aisles between seats are filled with people, the audience of Edo’s most popular breakfast chatshow sit in rapt, attentive silence. 

“Sadaharu... is my puppy,” says Kagura, and bows her head with the weight of her confession. “My sweet little puppy, uh-huh. And once we came in from a day in the park, and Sadaharu was only the _littlest_ bit covered in mud, and he only put his sweet little paws a _tiny_ bit all over the floor Pachi’d just washed, and he only rolled the very very _smallest_ bit over all the clean laundry Pachi’d just put away in the cupboard, uh-huh, but – but...” A deep intake of breath. Kagura looks bravely up into the camera as Gintoki rubs her back. “But... Pachi yelled anyway. That’s just what he’s like, uh-huh – he’s got a temper. And even the tiniest smallest most unimportant little things in the _world_ can set him off, like scraping all his breakfast onto my plate and eating it, or scraping all his lunch onto my plate and eating it, or—”

In a tone of heartfelt sympathy, the presenter asks, “Could you tell us what he said, Kagura-chan?” 

Kagura nods several times, building up her courage along with her atmosphere of masterfully crafted dramatic tension. “He told me to, to – to be _careful_ , uh-huh! And,” as her voice rises into a tragic wail, “he said I should _get control of my dog_ —!”

Gintoki keeps rubbing her back as she dissolves into tears. “‘Get control’,” he echoes, significantly. “ _Control_ – you can tell he’s got some real control issues, can’t you? Probably hated that he couldn’t control his sister’s life, if you ask me, in much the same way he always hated that he couldn’t control my private financial affairs – _rent_ , and _backpay_ , and _being sued into bankruptcy for copyright infringement_... He was always on about my money,” says Gintoki, whose back is now being rubbed in turn by Kagura. His voice is brokenly low. “It could have been us. That’s what I keep thinking.”

He heaves a desolate sigh. Kagura heaves a desolate sigh too. As one, their captivated studio audience sighs right along with them. 

And then, beamed into a million Edo households: an image of Shinpachi, hiding ineffectually from cameras. Beneath it scrolls a ribbon of text: 

_REMORSELESS SISTER-KILLING PSYCHOPATH CORRUPTED BY SICK OBSESSION WITH DATING SIMS? OR REMORSELESS SISTER-KILLING PSYCHOPATH CORRUPTED BY SEEDY UNDERWORLD OF IDOL FANDOM? CALL THIS NUMBER NOW TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS..._

And the phones start ringing.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [FOR THE (SHIMURA-THEMED) RECORD: I love Shinpachi, he's one of my fave characters, I wish him only the best in his deeply unfortunate life, and the Shimura sibs combo brings me nothing but pure unadulterated joy. Last part will hopefully be up some time soon, and in the meantime I'm [over here on tumblr](http://www.suitablyskippy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading, and any comments would be appreciated! ♥]


	4. Chapter 4

 

“That’s a fascinating question, Ketsuno-san, a _fascinating_ question, and I’d like to direct you to a particular moment from the second season of Gintama by way of reply— If we could just get that clip on the screen, please...? Thank you. Thank you very much. Now as you’ll see, Ketsuno-san, and might I just add that you’re looking radiant this morning, it’s an honour to share this sofa with you – _as_ you’ll see in this clip, our little Kagura-chan is about to... pass wind. She’s about to pass wind while we’re all eating dinner. Now, watch Shinpachi’s reaction _very_ closely...”

The screen fills with a scene from some long-ago episode: the Yorozuya around the table, Sadaharu snoozing. An argument between Gintoki and Kagura is heating up, and Shinpachi is attempting to break into it, and failing, and failing, and failing – and as soon as he gets a word in, Kagura delivers, just as promised. 

“ _Kagura-chan!_ ” Outraged and strident, this long-ago Shinpachi’s voice carries down the seasons. _“Is anyone even listening to me? Does anyone care what I have to say? At all? Ever? What do I have to do to get a little attention around here, Gin-san, do I have to fart as well? Is that what you want? Would that get me a little respect? Shimura Shinpachi, The Amazing Fart Machine?! Is that really the kind of humour you think I’m—”_

The scene freezes: Shinpachi red-faced and yelling, Kagura disinterested, cracking the yolk of her hundredth egg onto rice, Gintoki disinterested, excavating the depths of his ear. 

And then the scene shrinks, slowly, until it disappears; and the real Gintoki and Kagura fill the screen once more, watching the scene sombrely from their sofa in the breakfast show’s studio. 

“Well,” says Gintoki, and shakes his head. 

“ _Well_ ,” says Kagura, and heaves a sorrowful sigh. 

“In hindsight,” Gintoki tells the presenter soberly, “these are the kinds of signs we missed. The kinds of signs we all missed. This need for attention, this hunger for attention, this _lust_ for attention—”

“—and his bad temper,” Kagura tells the presenter, just as soberly, “all the shouting, the yelling, the screaming... _We_ thought he was just being the straight man, uh-huh. _We_ thought he was just really really committed to his role. But now...” A tremulous wobble has entered her voice. She takes a deep breath, and says bravely, “Now... I wonder how much anger Pachi must have had, uh-huh. All bottled up in him. Like a bomb. A timebomb.”

Again, Gintoki shakes his head. Again, Kagura heaves a sorrowful sigh. 

A silence draws out, just long enough to be respectful... 

And then: “Let’s look at another clip,” says Gintoki, the consummate professional, and once again the Yorozuya fill the screen. 

On the other side of the country and a considerable height above it, in a private cabin on board a gently swaying skyship, Tae reaches up and fumbles along the wall until she gets the catch for the porthole. Its blinds spring open and the light of dawn floods in. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen this episode,” Kyuubei says sleepily, watching the clip still playing. “Were you in it, Tae-chan?”

Tae squints at the little television sitting on their dresser. The glare of daylight is bouncing off its screen, but Shinpachi’s voice is loud. Loud, and unmistakeable. Loud and unmistakeable and outraged, and yelling about recycled background footage. “I don’t think so,” she says, thoughtfully. “I think I remember Shin-chan complaining about it afterwards, though. I think I might have bought him some throat sweets, in fact. He had a hoarse voice all week, I remember; it was wonderfully peaceful... Don’t you catch up on the episodes you’re not in, Kyuu-chan?”

“Only if you’re in them,” says Kyuubei. 

The limits of Tae’s chest seem suddenly far too small to contain her heart. She finds the remote – she switches the television off – she tosses the remote aside, and she rolls over to concentrate her attention on far more interesting matters. 

Somewhere outside the porthole window the sails of the skyship groan in the wind, the deck above them creaking. The other passengers are still sleeping at such a very early hour, but it’s already a beautiful morning, and she’s quite sure it’s going to be a beautiful day. 

 

+++

 

When it comes to travelling long distances unseen, a skyship is far and away the most luxurious way to do it. This one is taking a leisurely six-month tour of the country’s coastline, with an interior based wholly on the theme of polished wood and polished bronze, and its other passengers are far too rich to risk socialising with anyone who might turn out to be richer. It’s quiet up below the level of the clouds, and it’s quieter still when no one ever bothers looking a little too closely at Tae’s face behind her sunglasses. 

Their cabin also has an en suite bathroom, which is fortunate in more ways than one: Jugem Jugem registers no objections to setting up his futon in the empty bath. 

“He’s a very nice monkey,” Tae says, their third night on board, once Kyuubei’s settled him down in his bathtub bed and closed the door to ensure he actually stays in it, “but... he _is_ a monkey. Sometimes it’s nice to have a little time to yourself. Time without a monkey watching you. Time when you know there definitely, definitely won’t be a monkey scrambling into your lap any time soon.”

Kyuubei’s agreement is rueful. “He’s a quick learner, Tae-chan. But he struggles with abstract concepts. We’re still working on ‘privacy’.”

Tae’s sitting on the edge of their bed, her nicest floral yukata tied neatly closed. She puts out her foot to block Kyuubei’s return from the bathroom, and its front panel slides open to her knee: which is pale, and bare, and certainly isn’t anything either of them haven’t seen before – but still, an absurd instinct for modesty rises up in her. She forces it down. “But that door’s definitely closed, Kyuu-chan?”

“Definitely, Tae-chan.” 

“And... staying closed?”

“And staying closed. He’s not very good at handles, either.”

The look Kyuubei’s giving her seems torn between desperately wanting to believe it and hardly daring to believe it, and Tae recognises it because she’s feeling just the same way: it surely can’t be happening, none of it can be; but she wants it to. She really, really wants it to. The feeling fizzes inside her, or at least _a_ feeling fizzes inside her. 

“Good,” she says, and reaches up for the sash of Kyuubei’s yukata, and tugs. 

 

+++

 

“ _I_ think he got sick of being the boring one,” says Kagura, and spreads her hands out before her in a display of absolute frankness. Her qipao is new today: still bright red, still piped with gold, but it looks soft and silky and expensive in a way that her old ones never did. Her hair ornaments glitter under the studio lights, crusted with rubies. “ _I_ think he got sick of being the bland one, uh-huh, and the dull one, and the one who’s ‘the one with the glasses’.”

At her side Gintoki is nodding along, sombre as can be. He’s taken to wearing his hair slicked back on these breakfast shows, a pair of reading glasses hooked into his collar: the very picture of a professional young expert-for-hire. Sometimes he even wears both sleeves of his kimono. “We’ve all seen the kind of ratings that our, ahem, ‘bad boy characters’—” he scratches the quote marks into the air, as though he’d never ordinarily associate with such a phrase, “can expect in the character polls. And so had Patsuan. And so it’s Kagura-chan’s and my belief—”

“—that Pachi wanted to _be_ one of the bad boys, uh-huh. He wanted to be like Takasugi, or my big brother. He wanted... _popularity_ ,” says Kagura, and the whole studio – presenter and packed audience – waits in rapt silence as she exhales heavily, dejected by the very idea. “But Pachi could never be one of the bad boys, uh-huh. That’s just not his character type. He’s the one with the glasses, and that’s that.”

Gintoki looks directly into the camera. “Murdering your big sister doesn’t make you _cool_ ,” he says, with all the intensity of a true shounen protagonist. “It doesn’t make you _badass_. It makes you a wannabe. A pathetic wannabe. Remember that, kids. If there’s any lesson we can all take away from this tragedy, it’s that.”

“We’ve all got lessons to learn,” says Kagura, and exhales heavily again, with all the melancholy world-weariness of a woman four times her age. 

“Thank you _so_ much for sharing your insights with us this morning,” says the presenter, in a tone of hushed awe. She turns and sweeps a hand out towards her studio audience. “Everyone – Gin-san and Kagura-chan! Let’s show them our thanks!”

The applause is thunderous. 

 

+++

 

Up on the decks, the creaking of the sails is like the sound of a building about to fall. The wind is vicious no matter the time of day – the vast fabric of the sails ballooning out above them, the ropes groaning with the effort – and at the back end of the boat there’s not the slightest shelter to be found. 

“The stern,” says Kyuubei, peering through the telescope on the viewing deck. 

“The what?” yells Tae. 

“The _stern_ ,” Kyuubei yells back, and dives away from the telescope just in time to catch Tae’s sunhat before it skips away into the wind and is lost forever amongst the clouds. She yells her thanks and clamps it securely back beneath her arm, but with one hand on her binoculars, and the other trying to salvage whatever modesty there is to be had while the wind churns the skirt of her dress into a froth, it’s possible her sunhat might be a lost cause. “The back end of a boat, Tae-chan – it’s called the stern.”

The wind keeps howling, and the sails keep groaning, and Tae’s sunhat keeps flapping wildly beneath her arm, and beneath them the country simmers in the heat. Splotches of green, splotches of grey; through the binoculars fields and towns take shape, the glittering windows of high-rise towers and the squat lumps of tiny farmhouses. Along the broad seam of a highway, flying cars dart above the traffic, their metallic colours winking in the light like beetles’ wings. 

After a while, Tae lets the binoculars hang back down around her neck. “It’s beautiful,” she says. “I almost... I almost wish Shin-chan were here to see it with me.”

Kyuubei gives her a sharp look. 

“Oh, I know,” says Tae, ruefully, “I know, I know... But we’ve never had many opportunities to travel like this; we’ve never had the money. And I can’t help thinking – he’d love this. I’m sure he would. Even after everything, I can’t help thinking how much he’d love to see this view. Isn’t that silly?”

“If Shinpachi-kun wanted to be here to see it, then he shouldn’t have—” 

...but Kyuubei’s stout defence comes to an abrupt halt, as it occurs to both of them that Tae still hasn’t mentioned and Kyuubei still hasn’t asked just what it was, exactly, that Shinpachi _did_ do... 

With an effort, Kyuubei rallies. “He shouldn’t have – _whatever_ it was, Tae-chan, he shouldn’t have—”

“—done what he did?” suggests Tae. 

“Exactly,” says Kyuubei, relieved. “Every action has its price, Tae-chan. And the price of Shinpachi-kun’s actions is not seeing this view.”

“Amongst other things,” agrees Tae, and her doubts are settled once again; her heart is comforted; her conscience is clear as the view itself, which stretches endlessly on into a blue horizon, dazzling bright and wondrously clear: it’s another cloudless day.

 

+++

 

They’re back in mountainous territory when they disembark. Five days spent in a storage bay in the belly of a skyship has left their motorcycle none the worse for wear, and below the peaks along the ragged skyline the shade is deep and dark and cold, and the patches of sun are blinding. 

Up in the mountains they find another place to stay. There’s a sheer cliff rising upwards on one side, and a stream wide enough to be called a river on another side, and it’s everything the brochure promised. Chiefly, the brochure had promised it was isolated. It’s certainly isolated. 

“There’s no television,” says Kyuubei. It’s not a criticism, not a warning – just an observation, quiet and neutral, there for Tae to make of it what she will. 

“I know,” says Tae. “But that’s all right, isn’t it? We don’t need one. Holidays should be about forgetting the rest of the world. Making your own entertainment. And can’t we do that, Kyuu-chan?”

“I’d like to think so, Tae-chan,” says Kyuubei gravely – and, as it turns out, correctly. 

 

+++

 

One morning Tae wakes up and checks the time, and then she checks the date. 

And then she slides carefully out from beneath the sheets, and dresses as quietly as she can, and gets her battered old travel bag from the closet and begins, very quietly, to pack it; and then she goes to find Jugem Jugem and lets him out for his morning frolicking, and when she comes back Kyuubei is still sleeping, soundly, with a look of intense concentration. 

Tae sits down on the edge of the bed. “Kyuu-chan,” she whispers, and gently shakes Kyuubei’s shoulder. The look of intense concentration begins to waver, and then to dissolve. “I’m sorry to wake you up, Kyuu-chan—” 

“Not a problem,” says Kyuubei automatically, still half-asleep. 

“—but it’s time to go back to Edo,” says Tae. “It’s time to go back home.”

The look of intense concentration returns at once. Kyuubei wakes up in a hurry, and sits up in a hurry, and pushes back a tangled handful of loose dark hair to focus that intense concentration all the better on Tae. “Has something happened, Tae-chan?”

“Not exactly,” says Tae. “But I only hired our motorbike for one month, and the hire period is about to run out. And the late fees they charge are _extortionate_.”

“I see,” says Kyuubei. “Yes, I see. I understand. We’ll leave as soon as possible, Tae-chan.”

 

+++

 

It’s a breakneck ride back to Edo. Lunch is a fifteen minute stop in a chain restaurant off the side of the highway, and Tae keeps her sunglasses on through all of it: stylish, enigmatic, practical. There’s a television on the back wall, and on it they catch their first news broadcast all week: a sombre interview, two chairs with a low table between them, and either no studio audience at all or a studio audience that knows how to stay quiet, sitting and watching in silent judgement. 

“I love her,” says Shinpachi. “I’ve always loved her, and I’ll always love her, no matter what she does. Or... what she’s done. To me. Or—”

“Or what’s been done _to her_ , perhaps?” suggests the interviewer, in a tone as sharp and cold as ice, and Shinpachi hedges his way miserably around an agreement. 

“Did you hear that?” says Tae happily. “No matter what I’ve done, he said. And no matter what I do. _That’s_ the sort of appreciation a little brother should be showing, Kyuu-chan; _that’s_ the sort of gratitude a big sister should be able to expect...”

Shinpachi’s clothes are rumpled, and look like they haven’t been neatly pressed for weeks; his rapid glances up at the camera are haunted, and edgy, as though he expects something terrible – something even _more_ terrible – to happen any minute now. Even his hair has managed to overcome the serialisation stasis that keeps him looking fresh and broadcast-ready, week to week, and it’s falling unkempt and shaggy over his glasses. “But I don’t... I can’t believe she’s dead,” he says. “I don’t understand how anyone could kill her. Physically, I mean – I don’t understand how anyone _could_ kill her, even if they wanted to. She wouldn’t let them. That’s just what my sister’s like.”

Without looking, Tae finds Kyuubei’s hand across the table and holds it tightly. Both of them are gazing upwards, watching the screen with rapt attention. 

“So if anyone, _anyone_ – if anyone has any information about the whereabouts of Shimura Tae... please tell me. Please tell the police. There’ll be a vigil for her this evening, in the city park, where we always – where she loved to picnic. Where she _loves_ to picnic. Everyone who’s ever cared for my sister is welcome to come along.”

“A _vigil_ ,” says Tae, more happily still. “Do you think they’ll have candles, Kyuu-chan?”

“Hundreds,” says Kyuubei, with absolute confidence. “And pictures of you everywhere. Some little ones, some big ones.”

“People might make speeches,” says Tae. 

“I’d say speeches are guaranteed,” says Kyuubei. 

Outside, the glare of the day is blinding. The air is shimmering above the tarmac like it’s not quite sure what or where it is. The motorbike is parked in the shade of the restaurant’s back wall, out of easy sight of the roaring highway; in the cool, against the red-painted bricks, Tae pushes her sunglasses up into her hair and slides her hand to the back of Kyuubei’s neck, and says, “Do you really think there’ll be speeches?” 

“I’m certain,” Kyuubei tells her seriously. “But if there aren’t, then you should leave again. If there aren’t speeches, then that city doesn’t deserve you.”

It’s the most romantic thing Tae’s ever heard, and she puts into her kiss all the hot excitement that it would constitute reckless endangerment to put into her driving instead. 

 

+++

 

Edo is a glow above the mountainous skyline long before it’s visible through the forests, and as the sky slowly begins to darken its glow grows brighter still. Radiating light and the endless roar of traffic, the city swallows up the land so effortlessly that it’s easy to miss the point where it swallows up the two of them as well. The streets grow slowly familiar, and busier, and then either side the buildings start to rise and rise and rise, and all of a sudden it’s early on a weekday evening in Edo city centre, and the hugest, most complicated crossroads at the heart of it is congested as a Tetris game, horns blaring and exhaust fumes billowing, one miserable Shinsengumi on a platform in the middle with his pair of traffic-signalling paddles upraised, and with a sudden rush of hot wind a hover-scooter skids by low overhead...

Tae revs the engine harder, and Kyuubei holds on tighter, and with a little bit of creative, high-speed swerving and weaving the traffic jam fails to trouble them. The motorbike is returned to its hire shop without issue. They take their bags and set off through the city on foot. 

“All that fresh healthy mountain air was nice for a change,” says Tae happily, “but there’s something about this, isn’t there? Something about—” she waves to the road, the haulage lorry growling past, the punctured black bin bags spilling out their innards across the opposite pavement, “ _this_. Something you just can’t get anywhere else. I suppose it’s a sort of—”

“Someone’s noticed you,” Kyuubei says suddenly. “Don’t look. On your left. Should we cross the road?”

Tae breathes in deep. The smell of air pollution and home fills her and fortifies her. “ _Let_ them notice me,” she says, and removes her sunglasses. 

Jugem Jugem hops the very short distance between his master’s shoulder and her own and tugs gently on her ponytail. More than likely it’s an attempt to persuade her to turn left, towards the greengrocers’ shop in the next street over, but it’s not impossible that he could be providing support in his own inscrutable monkey fashion. 

The streets are busy, and growing busier. Feet get stamped, stomachs get elbowed; they press on through the crowds, and at last the tarmac turns to grass, and at last the park spreads out before them. 

The gathering gloom is full of wispy, wavering candlelight. Here, the crowd is more organised: people standing at the back, people sitting at the front, an audience gathered together in respectful, expectant silence. 

A squeal of static breaks the hush. “Testing, testing – excuse me, testing—”

“This way,” Tae whispers, and pulls Kyuubei after her, around behind the front ranks of the crowd, into the shadows of the cherry trees, for a better view. 

“—consider it rare indeed, in this day and age, to encounter a young woman in possession of such deep respect for the way of the samurai as Otae-dono, and rarer still to encounter a young woman whose admiration for the noble goals of the Joui movement was as passionate as Otae-dono’s – and, my comrades, _that_ is why we gather here today! Brought together, friend and foe, to honour the memory of a _true_ patriot, a warrior for liberty, fearsome and militant in the pursuit of freedom for her fellow countrymen and women—” 

“Katsura?” whispers Kyuubei, up on tiptoes in an attempt to see. 

“Unfortunately,” Tae whispers back, and pushes another step forward. 

“—and _many_ times was I privileged to witness her patriotic passion in action!” Katsura cries, his amplified words booming out across his silent gathered audience, candles everywhere cupped in hands, candlelight wavering, candlewax burning, “for all her life it was _me_ to whom Otae-dono would turn when she sought words of wisdom from an experienced elder; it was _me_ from whom Otae-dono would ask guidance when the unforgiving life of the Joui patriot felt as though it had grown too hard for her; it was _me_ from whom Otae-dono would seek advice on matters as diverse as which films I liked to watch, which films I found particularly entertaining, and which films I would recommend to her as a result of my having personally enjoyed them—”

“Those matters aren’t diverse at all,” says – says _someone_ – Tae’s heart ricochets against her ribs – says _who_...?

Kyuubei steps respectfully back, and Tae pushes another step forward. 

There’s Katsura, his kimono of mourning black even gloomier in the shadows of the cherry trees – and there behind him is Gintoki, in an immaculately cut suit of mourning black, and there sitting on one of the big speaker amps is Kagura, in a tastefully sequinned qipao of mourning black, and resting against the other speaker amp is a photograph of Tae – a large one, and a lovely one, its frame garlanded in mourning black – and at a few metres’ distance from them both, up there at the front of the crowd but separated from his colleagues, on his own and off to the side, in a kimono of mourning black – up there, at the front, there’s Shinpachi—

“I beg your pardon?” says Katsura. 

“Those matters aren’t diverse,” says Shinpachi. “You said my sister asked your advice on diverse matters, but those matters aren’t diverse. Those matters are just your favourite films. And she _didn’t_ ask your advice on that,” as his voice begins to rise, “she’s never asked your advice on _anything_ , Katsura-san! And she isn’t a member of the Joui! And she’s _never_ admired your politics, and you’re making this all about _you_! It’s _not_ about you! It’s about her! Give me the microphone!” 

He lunges forward and tries to snatch it from Katsura’s hand. Katsura fends him off. 

Shinpachi grabs for the microphone again. Katsura yanks the microphone up above his head, out of reach; the cable snaps taut, and Kagura leaps to her feet with a yell of warning that Shinpachi entirely ignores. “Katsura-san! Give that to me!” 

“Temper, temper,” says Gintoki, and shakes his head. Then he heaves a sigh, just for good measure, and gazes pensively out across the crowd as though he hasn’t the energy left in him for anything but that. “That temper’ll get you in trouble one day, Pachi, you mark my words. One day it’ll—”

He stops, abruptly. Kagura is the first to notice his silence, and once she stops wrestling for the microphone then Katsura notices too, and once Katsura stops fighting then Shinpachi notices, and one after the other they follow the line of Gintoki’s sight. 

From the front row of the audience Tae smiles, and waves. 

There’s a moment of silence that feels as deep and dark as the bottom of the sea. 

Shinpachi’s face takes on about a dozen different expressions and as many different colours, but in the jumping candlelight all of them look sickly. “A,” he says. “A... Ane-ue. A ghost. Ane-ue? A ghost? A... a, I mean, _ane-ue_?”

“Hello, Shin-chan,” Tae says cheerfully. “Did you miss me?”

He’s staring at her as fixed and frozen as though he’s never planning to move a single muscle in his body ever again. 

Softly, distantly, a murmur has started passing through the crowd, like the sound of the sea in a seashell. 

“Boss lady!” cries Kagura, and races towards her, shoving aside the people sitting on the grass, scrambling between them and over them and launching herself into Tae with all her weight, so hard she stumbles backwards, half-winded but laughing, and hugs her tightly back. “I knew it! I knew it! Did you have a nice holiday? Did you see me on the television? Did you know I’m famous now?”

“I had a lovely holiday, thank you,” Tae tells her fondly, smoothing down her hair between the ornaments: which are black for mourning today, glittering with black diamonds, with tassels of black silk. “And I did see you on the television, Kagura-chan; you were very impressive, and if Shounen Jump has the slightest idea what’s good for it then I’m sure you’ll be receiving an offer for your very own spin-off any day now.”

Gintoki’s halfway to smiling, like _all_ the way to smiling would just be a little too much work, but that almost-smile feels as warm as Kagura’s bone-crushing hug. “Good to have you back,” he says. 

“It’s good to be back, Gin-san,” says Tae, and returns his smile. 

“ _Holiday_?” bursts out Shinpachi, still frozen to the spot. 

“Well, of course,” says Tae. She looks at him over Kagura’s head with gentle concern. “Wherever did you think I was, Shin-chan?” 

“The,” says Shinpachi. Like his mind’s snagged on a loose thread, he keeps coming helplessly back to it: “The, the – ane-ue, the _blood_! There was so much blood!”

“Oh, dear,” says Tae. “Was there really? I cut myself preparing breakfast, you see; and I did try to clean it all up before I left... But I suppose in my hurry to get going, perhaps I might not have been as careful as usual. Perhaps I might have left a few specks here and there.” 

“There were _puddles_!” cries Shinpachi. “Ane-ue, it was _everywhere_! Everywhere! On the walls! It was splashed on the _ceiling_ —!” 

Kagura rounds on him accusingly. “You think the boss lady should’ve stuck around to clean the whole house the morning she went on holiday, uh-huh? Is that it, Pachi? The boss lady shouldn’t have gone on holiday, she should have stayed home and done housework? Is that what you’re saying, Pachi?”

“ _No_!” howls Shinpachi. “Ane-ue, you _disappeared_! You went missing! I thought I’d never see you again, I thought – I thought you were _gone_! Forever! I did! And now—” 

“Wait,” says Gintoki suddenly. There’s a strained note in his voice, like he’s stifling laughter; he flaps his hand for silence. “Wait, Shinpachi. You, ah – you didn’t actually... _believe_ all that stuff about Otae-san being dead, did you?”

Shinpachi stares from him to Tae to Kagura and back. He says nothing. He looks like he probably couldn’t say anything even if he wanted to. 

Kagura and Gintoki exchange a look of deep mutual embarrassment. “He _did_ ,” says Kagura, her voice hushed. “Gin-chan, what do we do? No one will work with the Yorozuya if this gets public, uh-huh. No one will trust us with their money if they know about this.”

“You knew all along?” says Shinpachi. “Kagura-chan, you... knew my sister was alive? From the start?”

“The boss lady could never be defeated,” says Kagura, in a tone of utter confidence. “Especially not by _you_ , uh-huh.” 

“And you didn’t... tell me?” says Shinpachi. His voice sounds like a long-distance phone call, faded by weak signal. “You... didn’t tell me, Kagura-chan? Gin-san? All those interviews, Gin-san? You didn’t tell me she was alive, but you told the rest of the country I’d killed her?”

“Ah, now, we never _said_ you’d killed her,” says Gintoki, reprovingly. “We just strongly implied it. It’s a legal loophole, Pachi.” 

“Yorozuya Gin-chan have been learning _all_ about legal loopholes,” Kagura agrees. “You could’ve too, Shinpachi, but you kept moping around so much we never got the chance to teach you.”

“And anyway,” says Gintoki, adjusting the dainty golden strawberries in his cufflinks with an air of modest pride, “they made it worth our while.”

Shinpachi draws in a breath. From long experience, Tae recognises it instantly as the kind of breath that precedes the start of screaming; and from equally long experience, she recognises in his wild-eyed expression just how close he is to the edge of hysteria. He’s always had a taste for theatrics. “Shin-chan,” she says, gently. “Shin-chan, there’s really no need to make such a fuss about this. We’ve had a lovely holiday, and even if there’s been a little bit of trouble here while I’ve been away, I’m sure we can get it all sorted out now I’m back. Can’t we?”

Shinpachi looks at her. Then he lets out the breath, and all the hysteria with it, and his shoulders sag as the last of the fight goes miserably out of him. “ _We’ve_ had a lovely holiday?” he echoes. 

“Kyuu-chan and me,” says Tae. She peers out into the crowded gloom. “Ah – Kyuu-chan...?”

“I didn’t want to intrude on your family reunion,” says Kyuubei, materialising at once. “But it was very touching. Kagura-chan, Gintoki. I’m glad you’re well.”

Kagura’s gasp is like the sound of an aeroplane taking off. She claps a hand across her mouth, her eyes huge with shock; she grabs Gintoki’s wrist and squeezes till his bones creak. 

“What the hell?” says Gintoki. His slouch disappears; his whole posture stiffens with alarm. “Otae-san – what the _hell_? Kyuubei? Is that Kyuubei-kun? Is there a priest here? Is anyone here qualified to perform exorcisms?”

“We went to your _funeral_!” wails Kagura. 

“You can’t have done,” says Kyuubei. “Funerals are for the dead. And I’m alive. It must have been someone else’s funeral, Kagura-chan. Perhaps you forgot.” 

“ _Why_ is this more dramatic than my sister being alive?” cries Shinpachi in despair, but it’s lost – the crowd is dissolving in a frenzy around him – Kondou and a few of his lesser-furred hangers-on, Otose and her bar staff and a variety of loyal thugs, Sacchan in bright purple without the slightest effort made towards appropriate mourning attire, women of Kabukichou, women of Yoshiwara, a selection of visibly armed samurai equally likely to be representatives of the Yagyuu or the Jouishishi—

“ _Young Master_!” shrieks Tojo, and launches himself across the disintegrating crowd towards Kyuubei, or at least towards the business end of Kyuubei’s sword, which is what whips out to greet him and keep his hysterical sobbing at a slightly more hygienic distance. “You’re alive! You’re alive! And Otae-san, _what_ a treat, both as fresh and lovely as ever and alive, _alive_ —” 

“Silence,” commands Kyuubei, and receives it, except for the sobbing. “Tell me why everyone thought I was dead.” 

“Because I told everyone you were dead,” says Tojo. “I’ve never been surer of anything than I was that you’d killed Otae-san and then yourself, Young Master, but it’s a _marvellous_ surprise to see I was mistaken—”

Kyuubei’s expression is abruptly darker than Tae’s ever seen it. “Draw your sword and get on your knees. I’ll allow you two minutes for prayer. Then perform seppuku.”

“But – _Young Master_! But Otae-san was missing! And you were missing! And what else was I to think? What was _anyone_ to think? A murder-suicide was the obvious conclusion, the _only_ conclusion—” On Tojo’s every side the crowd is drawing back, as though his misfortune’s contagious and no one wants to catch it; he’s surrounded but alone, and he’s still babbling when his knees hit the dirt. “One of the darker tropes, I’ll admit, but nevertheless a classic of its kind, and almost inevitable when all those feminine passions finally reach boiling point and bubble over – and since disclosing my certainties to the Shinsengumi would only have sullied your good name, Young Master, when they came round asking to speak to you I told them you’d died the week before. To detract suspicion, you see. From the murder-suicide you’d committed. Which I now realise you hadn’t committed. But all the same—”

“This _isn’t_ more dramatic than my sister being alive,” insists Shinpachi. He looks desperately around him, but no one’s listening. “It isn’t. It _isn’t_. It—”

“Tae-chan, Kagura-chan. Please don’t look,” says Kyuubei, standing stern vigil over Tojo’s last moments in the mortal world. “I’ll tell you when it’s over. Tojo, you have one minute left. Then disembowel yourself.”

“Mercy! Mercy, Young Master, somewhere in your gentle heart, _mercy_ —”

“This is mercy,” says Kyuubei, unmoved. 

“The scum of the earth don’t deserve mercy,” announces Kagura, unmoved by anything but the cheerful role of executioner’s sidekick. “I’ll chop his head off for you afterwards, Kyuu-chan, if you want. Me and Gin-chan did a job trimming weeds the other day, uh-huh, I know what I’m doing. It’s all in the wrist,” she adds knowledgeably, and mimes a vigorous golf swing. 

“No,” says Shinpachi, and, “No!” cries Shinpachi, and, “ _No_!” howls Shinpachi, wild-eyed, and he hurls himself between Tojo and the implacable overseer of his demise. “No! Stop it! _All_ of you stop it! I was about to be arrested for murder! Has everyone forgotten? Does no one _care_?”

“Yeah, but you weren’t really,” says Gintoki, and claps him reassuringly on the back. “No one believed that stuff, except you.”

“Okita-san told me I’d be hanged by the end of the month!” 

“Oh, he says that to everyone we bring in for questioning,” says Kondou, with a chuckle. “It’s just Sougo’s little joke. Don’t take it personally, eh?”

All around the park, the volume of the crowd is rising. News seems to be spreading that something of some sort has happened, somewhere, to someone, and though no one seems quite sure what it _is_ that’s happened, the murmuring of the crowd is rising to a rumbling, most likely to soon rise into a roar. 

Tae pushes Kyuubei’s sword hand down, and says in an urgent whisper, “I’m going to take Shin-chan home before he makes a scene, and you’d better go and tell your family there was never any need to hold your funeral – but Kyuu-chan, I had the most wonderful holiday. I really did.”

Kyuubei studies her seriously, for a moment... and then, as suddenly happy as someone who’s already ceased to care about not only the execution-by-suicide still awaiting their command, and not only the vast extended family presumably still lost in misguided grief, but also all the rest of it, everything _but_ Tae – suddenly happy, Kyuubei smiles up at her. “Me too, Tae-chan. Can I see you tomorrow?” 

“Come over in the morning,” says Tae. “That’s when I’m going to auction off my first interview – oh, but we’d better go before the press get here! I don’t want _anyone_ getting an accidental scoop...” 

A moment for parting – and then Kyuubei disappears with Jugem Jugem, sudden and silent, into the shadow of the trees; and Tae sidesteps Tojo, still obliviously begging Kagura for his life, and she goes to Shinpachi. 

He watches her getting nearer with a look of frozen incomprehension. “Don’t you think we should be heading home, Shin-chan?” Tae says gently. “It’s starting to get dark.”

He turns his head to her. It’s a jerky motion, like a badly animated monster from a low-budget horror film. 

“Come on,” she says, gently, and gently she takes his arm. He doesn’t object. The noise behind them is still rising as they leave. 

The city streets are oddly quiet. Perhaps the news of growing chaos in the park has spread; the citizens of Edo are never slow to make the most of opportunities for impromptu rioting, revelry, and public unrest. They pass through the brightly lit centre of town, and out through shopping streets that grow progressively less and less upmarket as they go, and Tae skirts them around the neon pulse of Kabukichou by following the river instead, along street after street lined by illuminated food carts, all the way down to the bridge that leads into the quieter residential district. 

Two streets from home, Shinpachi makes a sound. It’s an indistinct sound, not quite speech. 

“Shin-chan?” 

“You framed me,” says Shinpachi. “Ane-ue, you framed me. Didn’t you? You _did_.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Tae. 

This far from the city centre, the streets are quiet. Their sandals clap against the tarmac, very nearly in rhythm with each other. 

“I don’t know,” says Shinpachi, “what I – what I ever did, ane-ue. To you. What I did to deserve... _this_.” 

A lone strip of police tape still clings to their front gates, yellow and fluttering in the breeze. Tae peels it off and folds it tidily inside her sleeve. “Sometimes,” she says, “a lot of little things can just... pile up, Shin-chan. And then sometimes you put one more little thing on the pile and it all comes tumbling down.” 

Wordlessly, Shinpachi opens the gate. She follows him in. 

“Like tidying your room, Shin-chan. I don’t have to do that. But I _do_ do that, from the goodness of my heart. And when I’ve had a long hard day, and when I’ve done my best to tidy your room anyway – and when _you_ come home, and start stamping around and shouting that you never gave me permission to go inside your room to start with...” Tae looks around, surveying her territory. The flower beds have been neglected, baked brown by summer. She sighs. “Well, it’s easy to feel unappreciated, that’s all. And sometimes, when you feel unappreciated... you can’t help wanting to remind people of how much you _ought_ to be appreciated.” 

A broad dirt trail has been worn into the grass since she left, leading across the garden to the house: trampled by the foot traffic of police. They follow it in silence. 

“But then,” says Tae, and sighs again, more sorrowfully still, “I don’t suppose you’d even remember it, would you? Not a little disagreement like that... It was the final straw for me, but it must seem so insignificant to you, Shin-chan.” 

“No. No – I do remember,” says Shinpachi. “Ane-ue, I _do_ remember. It was last winter. I remember that I specifically asked you not to go into my room. And then I came home and you’d been all through my room.”

“Well, of course,” says Tae primly. “That’s the duty of a big sister, Shin-chan. As soon as you asked me to stay out, I could tell you had something to hide.”

“Yes,” says Shinpachi. “Yes – _your Christmas present_.”

Tae slides open the front door. The house is musty inside, and unfamiliar; there’s a sweaty male smell like the memory of heavy Shinsengumi presence. “My... what, sorry?” she says. 

“I’d hidden it under my bed,” says Shinpachi. His frozen layer of calm is beginning to crack. The horror beneath is beginning to show through. “But I knew it was a terrible hiding place. I was planning to find a better one that evening. That’s why I asked you to stay out, ane-ue. That’s why I panicked when you went in.”

“I see,” says Tae. Her voice is distant, her thoughts faraway. “My Christmas present...? Yes, I see.”

The front door is still open behind them. The evening is fading into purple. Beyond their dojo’s high walls the city is beginning to twinkle brighter than the stars above it. 

“I’d _never_ have shouted,” says Shinpachi, “ _never_ – not if I hadn’t had a reason, ane-ue... But it was the present. Your present was in there.” He’s searching her expression, desperately, like there _has_ to be a different answer hiding in there somewhere; but there isn’t. “And that’s – _that’s_ the only reason you...?”

“Perhaps,” Tae says distantly, “perhaps, if I’d known... Well,” as she snaps out of her reverie, all business now, “I _didn’t_ know, so there’s no point wondering, is there? And in any case, it’s the principle of the thing. I think this has been a very educational month for both of us, Shin-chan.”

Shinpachi says nothing. Then he says, “Don’t do it again.”

“I don’t think it would work a second time,” confesses Tae. 

“No, I mean – leaving. Don’t leave me like that again,” says Shinpachi. His voice is shaking. “I thought you were _gone_ , ane-ue, you don’t know – you have no _idea_ how I... how it felt to—” His voice breaks. He knocks his glasses askew as he rubs his arm across his face, and then he hugs her so tightly it’s like he’s trying to convince himself she’s really there. 

“Oh, Shin-chan... We’ve both learned a lot from this, haven’t we?” says Tae, patting his back comfortingly as he cries. “And that’s what matters. That’s what’s important, when all’s said and done. Like appreciating what we have, for instance,” she goes on, her voice soothing. “It’s so easy to forget to do that, isn’t it? It’s so easy to take the people in your life for granted. And sometimes all you need is a little change of perspective, and then you realise just how fortunate you are to have them, and just how much you love them, and just how much they mean to you. Isn’t that how it’s been for you, as well?”

He mumbles something damply into her shoulder. It sounds a little like _I’m so afraid of you_ , but it could easily also be _I’m so amazed by you_ , so Tae gives him the benefit of the doubt. 

“Come on, Shin-chan,” she says, and gives him one last bracing pat. “Let’s get this place cleaned up, shall we? There’ll be a lot of journalists here tomorrow, and they’ll want to hear _all_ about how happy you are to have me back. You’d better make sure you have plenty of lovely things to say about me, hadn’t you?” 

“I think... I think having you back makes this the best day of my life,” says Shinpachi, dazedly. He pulls away and stares at her. “But I think... knowing what you did to me means it’s also, possibly... the worst day, too...?” 

“All’s well that ends well, Shin-chan,” says Tae cheerfully. 

Shinpachi stares at her a moment longer, and then with an effort he snaps out of it; and though his smile’s a little weak, he looks much more like himself than he has all evening when he says, “Welcome home, ane-ue.” 

“It’s good to be back,” says Tae.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a) at last i can say a huge THANK YOU to gillian flynn, since this fic would naturally not exist without her perfect and horrible novel ‘gone girl’!!! if you somehow haven’t read it yet then please run, don’t walk, to get your hands on a copy. and while i’m on the topic i’m just going to rec everything else she’s ever written, too; she’s the ruling queen of selfish and alarming female narrators with very few redeeming features, so obviously i’m 100% in love. 
> 
> b) i’m very happy to have finally finished this fic, and i really hope it’s been fun for anyone else as well! i’ve never really written long, chaptered fic before gintama fandom, and even though writing this fic has been a ton of fun for me, it’s also been a bit nerve-wracking this whole time to be posting something so long & peculiar – so it’d really mean a lot to me to hear from anyone who’s been reading along and/or enjoying! as usual i'm [over here on tumblr](http://www.suitablyskippy.tumblr.com/), and thank you very much for reading. ♥


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